Masters of quality: general haematology meeting

As far back as 1969, UK NEQAS has provided comprehensive, high-standard external quality assessment (EQA) services in laboratory medicine, and nowhere is this better reflected than in its commitment to annual participants’ meetings. Through education and the promotion of best practice, UK NEQAS helps to ensure continued improvement in patient care and quality standards. However, in the current climate of change and uncertainty for pathology services and the NHS in general, it was appropriate that at a recent meeting UK NEQAS General Haematology scheme director Professor Keith Hyde should introduce Dr Archie Prentice, President of The Royal College of Pathologists (RCPath) to deliver the keynote presentation entitled ‘The Future of NHS Pathology’.

Pathology alliance
Never one to mince his words, Dr Prentice considered that, just as in life, there can be no status quo in pathology, and the inconceivable is always possible. Money talks, he claimed, and forecasted that financial doom for the NHS was lurking around the corner in terms of future health benefits for patients versus healthcare spending, which, if left unchecked, in his opinion could take the UK back to the debt levels of the great depression. Worse still, pathology was now considered as an easy target for further financial cuts in the wake of the recommendations of the Carter report, despite the fact that pathology still provides an excellent value-for-money service.

“We in pathology are the recognised masters of quality systems,” he stated, adding that the UK NEQAS consortium was very much the model of quality. Despite this, Dr Prentice considered that many challenges remained ahead for UK pathology services. He said that not only were we taken for granted by the clinicians and often greatly misunderstood, but that pathology in general operates in a ‘black box’ and needs to get out of the laboratory and blow its own trumpet in order to improve its PR, adding that not only are pathology results vitally important, they also open the door to patient care pathways. To that end, Dr Prentice announced the imminent return of The Pathology Alliance, a former collaboration between the RCPath, IBMS and the Association of Clinical Scientists, which he hoped would soon be promoting the value and importance of UK pathology with a strong and united voice.