Performance Monitoring

The central purpose of external quality assessment is to ensure that laboratories are delivering a service of the highest possible quality. GenQA maintains the principle of assessment by professional consensus and attempts to improve standards by education and peer group review rather than by censure or penalty.

Performance criteria are necessary to allow an individual laboratory's performance to be measured against national/international standards and to identify any laboratory which is failing to meet these criteria. Participants who fall below the standards detailed in the following documents are deemed to be performing poorly.

The performance criteria for poor performance and persistent poor performance are ratified by the appropriate GenQA Specialist Advisory Group and endorsed by the UK National Quality Assessment Advisory Panel (NQAAP) for Genetics. Performance scores and relevant raw data may be shared with the relevant Advisory Panel (UK), FOPH (Switzerland) or relevant SAG (all countries) under defined circumstances.  Anonymised Poor Performance data is also shared with the ESHG-EuroGentest Quality Subcommittee.

Once a Swiss or UK laboratory meets the criteria for a persistent poor performance, the Scheme is obliged to notify FOPH (Swiss) or NQAAP for Genetics (UK) respectively.