Investigation and analysis of current application status of testing items of clinical laboratories in China / 中华检验医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the current application status of clinical laboratories in China, includingtesting items, the testing amount of each item, total cost of each item and turnaround time ( TAT) of each item.The testing tem with larger proportion of testing amount required better quality control, more financial investment and policy making.Methods Except Tibet and Taiwan, 30 provinceswere included in this investigation.3 grade A tertiary hospitals, 3 tertiary hospitals and 3 secondary hospitals were randomly chosen from every province, and 270 hospitals were enrolled totally.The principals of clinical laboratories of chosen hospitals were contacted by each provincial center of clinical laboratories to complete the online questionnaire.The submitted data was checked by staff of our center and analyzed by Microsoft Excel 2007. The survey information included general information of the hospital, testing menu of the laboratory, test panels , annual test amount, cost, turnaround time, et al.Results All the hospitals enrolled in this investigation had submitted effective results (100%, 270/270).There were 628 single testing item collected in this survey230 single items were in the field of clinical immunology, which made the biggest proportion (36.62%, 230/628 ); the total amount of testing of clinical chemistry had the biggest proportion (59.97%);the summary amount of the top 100 testing items exceeded 90% of the overall amount; the summary cost of the top 100 testing items exceeded 85% of the overall cost.Conclusions The information collected and analyzed after the survey of testing items of clinical laboratories in China could provide valuable reference information for quality control, financial investment and policy making.