National survey on appropriateness of clinical biochemistry reporting in China

Accurate and reliable testing reports play an important role in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of disease. However, little is known about the appropriateness of laboratory testing reporting in China. This national survey takes clinical biochemistry as an example to investigate the state of reporting appropriateness in our country.

An electronic questionnaire was sent to 1209 laboratories. The participants were asked to retrospectively evaluate the error rates of the following quality indicators: report template integrity, report content filling integrity, report delay, report recall, non-conformities between instrument and laboratory information system (LIS) data, non-conformities between report and request, report notification error, and report modification. Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to identify the potential impacts of reporting appropriateness.

A total of 662 of the 1209 laboratories (55%) submitted the survey results, with three returning incomplete data. For the integrity of the report, only 31% of the laboratories had a complete report template that contained all of 21 elements. In addition, the overall error rate of content filling integrity was 45.9% for 19,770 pieces of reports. The overall σ-values of other six quality indicators were all >4, and no significant difference was found among different departments. Group comparison suggested that reporting electronically had a better performance.

The laboratory reporting system in China needs to improve, particularly the integrity of the report. Strengthening information technology will not only promote reporting appropriateness, but also guarantee accurate, standardized and traceable data collection and long-term monitoring.