NPDN Lab Accreditation Program

• Ensures accurate and consistent diagnostics
• Promotes continuous improvement of diagnostic services
• Provides confidence in laboratory diagnostic results
• Supports policies to stay up to date with new technology
• Improves time-management skills, productivity, and cost efficiency
• Provides a defensible framework to support laboratory findings
• Improves new employee transitions
• Improves customer satisfaction
• Promotes public awareness

Accreditation will provide a means of ensuring network laboratories meet a set standard and demonstrates that a laboratory has a functional Quality Management System for diagnostic procedures performed by the laboratory staff. Involvement in an accreditation system provides benefits not only to individual laboratories but to the entire plant diagnostic network.

Accreditation provides confidence that your laboratory has a well-established quality management system.

Yes! Core was developed to accommodate whether you have a 1-person or a 12-person laboratory.

Eventually, all laboratories within the NPDN will be required to become accredited through the NPDN Core program. Initially, we are piloting this project with a few NPDN laboratories to ensure that the standard requirements are suitable for NPDN laboratories.

Most experienced laboratory personnel probably already incorporate many quality management principles into their current laboratory processes which satisfy certain requirements of accreditation. Requirements for accreditation will include attention to detail, use of standardized protocols and good record keeping. Joining the accreditation program will allow you to organize what you are  already doing according to a system-wide accreditation standard. When preparing for accreditation a good motto to follow is “Say what you do; do what you say”.

No. The templates are available for your use directly or to serve as a guide for your current documentation. You can use your current documentation as long as it is suitable for incorporation into the Quality Management System. The most important requirement is that each document used has or can be given a unique tracking number so it can be referenced when needed within your Quality Management System and updates can be clearly identified.

The accreditation program will provide many resources to help your laboratory develop a Quality Management System. However, some extra effort by each laboratory is needed to participate in accreditation. Developing a Quality Management System, including accreditation, shouldn’t be looked at as additional work but simply viewed as a part of the standard operation of an efficient and credible laboratory. Think of it as a way of organizing and documenting what you already do. The time you spend preparing your laboratory for accreditation will help you identify aspects of your laboratory that may need some additional attention and will help improve the diagnostic services you are already providing.