Introduction

摘要

No one disputes that healthcare costs are increasing dramatically. At the same time, quality and value of healthcare services are being called into question. More and more, the attention of medical laboratory professions (MLP) is being directed toward assessment of quality of clinical laboratory information as correlated with patient outcomes, clinical decision-making, and cost. Emerging is the concept of "value-based healthcare" in which information regarding quality of services is made accessible to consumers, who generate demand for these products and services. Producers compete to increase the value of services which is defined as quality of patient outcomes relative to the cost.1'2 For laboratory medicine (LM), the distillate of these developments is that the value of our services will be evaluated by how well they support positive medical outcomes and the extent to which they favorably influence medical decision-making.