Portrait des stratégies mises en place pour optimiser la pertinence de la prescription des analyses de laboratoire : expériences canadiennes et étrangères

This report is a summary document to review the experiences of different countries and Canadian provinces regarding strategies implemented to improve test-ordering appropriateness.

This report focuses on the experiences of a few countries and Canadian provinces that have adopted an action plan or health-care policies for organizing laboratory services: Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta, in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and Australia. This document is a literature review examining different strategies for reducing the inappropriate use of medical laboratory tests and the results of these interventions.

Upon completing this analysis, INESSS made the following observations: An overviewof the experiences elsewhere is a complex exercise because of issues regarding the availability and quality of the relevant data. Nonetheless, it emerges from this exercise that a number of factors and stakeholders come into play when organizing laboratory services and that the optimization process is a multifaceted strategy that involves combining several of the measures mentioned.