CLSI offers eLearning Certificate Program on implementing the cost of quality in the laboratory

The Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) has released a new eLearning program, Implementing the Cost of Quality in the Laboratory Certificate Program. This online learning program provides guidance to laboratories in understanding and managing the different types of quality costs that affect processes, services, and financial well-being in the laboratory setting.

Managing different types of quality costs is crucial to understanding and communicating various expenditures on a laboratory's budget. Quality cost information is especially useful when justifying retention of budget allocations for costs that support quality in laboratory services and actions to reduce failure costs. This eLearning Certificate Program is based on the CLSI report QMS20-R—Understanding the Cost of Quality in the Laboratory, which provides guidance on how a laboratory can continually improve its financial performance.

This eLearning program goes further than the report by demonstrating the cost of quality premise and its impact on a laboratory’s work, such as the roles of quality costs in a laboratory quality management system and the core elements of a philosophy on cost and quality. The program assists laboratories in identifying the different types of quality costs among failure, appraisal, and prevention costs; helps laboratories calculate their quality costs; and finds ways to apply failure cost to a selected laboratory indicator or nonconforming event. It also explains how to promote and manage a cost-of-quality culture through a review of successful quality cost initiatives from a real-life laboratory case study. The program can be completed in approximately four hours for 4.0 P.A.C.E. continuing education credits.