The Joint Commission “Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Laboratory and Point- of-Care Testing (CAMLAB)” has been updated to provide clarity, additional specificity and detail to the standards and elements of performance. A preview of the new manual is posted on The Joint Commission web site, and laboratories will be surveyed against the new manual beginning in July 2011.
The updated standards seek to improve the quality of diagnostic services. The standards and related elements of performance provide clearer compliance expectations to make the on-site survey process more transparent, but continue to offer flexibility for laboratories to tailor the standards for their specific organization.
Approximately nine percent of the new standards and 32% of the new elements of performance are associated with removing the reference to AABB standards.
Accredited labs will receive the new standards in the 2011 Update 1 to the manual, to be published in March.
The new standards arrived as the Joint Commission worked closely with a group of laboratorians, including pathologists and laboratory managers from a wide range of facility sizes and types to provide broad insight into the quality system needs of laboratories.