Document Control Practices in 120 Clinical Laboratories (Cap Laboratory Improvement Programs) (Report‪)‬

The term document control refers to a group of information-management practices related to documents. There is no uniformly accepted definition of what constitutes document control in the clinical laboratory industry. (1) In our experience, the term is applied to a variety of different document types and a variety of control practices. Commonly, laboratory managers apply the term document control to laboratory policies and procedures, but the term is sometimes also applied to laboratory forms, work aids (''cheat sheets''), and to laboratory records that include patient or quality data. Document control practices generally include provisions to ensure that documents are available to staff who need them, are current, have been properly authorized by the laboratory director or by someone the director appoints, and are properly archived when taken out of service. If the term documents is defined as including records containing patient health information, document control also includes measures to ensure the integrity and security of documents. (2)