External Quality Assessment programs in clinical laboratories are designed to do what?

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External Quality Assessment programs focus on comparing laboratory performance across facilities to assure quality. They send blinded or unknown samples to participating labs, which analyze them as they would routine tests and report the results back. The program then collects and analyzes results from many labs, comparing them to reference values and to peer performance. This helps reveal how different labs, methods, or instruments are performing in practice, identify systematic biases or drifts, and highlight where improvements, recalibration, or training are needed. The overarching purpose is ongoing quality assurance and standardization across laboratories, ensuring that test results are accurate and reliable regardless of where they’re performed. While automation, speed, or cost reductions can be secondary outcomes of improved processes, they are not the primary aim of external quality assessment.