Thank you Alison, Is there an appropriate number of times in a given time frame for adjusting qc ranges. Reference ranges are said to be adjusted at approximately 6 mos time frames. Would this hold true for qc as well?

Thank you –

Providing you are using a stable quality control material in which analyte concentrations are not drifting during the shelf life, then there is no need to reassign ranges. The control targets and ranges should remain constant for the duration of the shelf life; this would be the case as long as you are using a fully human control serum that closely mimics patient samples. In the case where you are not, you may see systematic control target shifts on reagent batch changes, resulting in a need to reassign control targets, particularly when running immunoassay or immunolgy tests using antibody based methods. The only scenario where you should need to reassign control targets is where an assay has been restandardized. In this case, you would quite clearly see any shift that has occurred from the Levey Jennings chart displayed on a peer group programme.

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