Cost of quality in healthcare: a case study in a clinical laboratory

In today's environment, many laboratories are challenged to maintain or increase their quality while simultaneously lowering their overall costs. The objective of this research is to use the cost of quality (COQ) model to estimate the COQ‐related activities at a clinical laboratory located in Morocco. Using data collected during six month, we allocated the direct costs associated with quality‐related activities in the laboratory across COQs cost categories: prevention, appraisal, internal failures, and external failures. We found that approximately 83% of total COQ was spent on costs of 'good quality' (prevention and appraisal), while 17% was spent on costs of 'poor quality' (internal and external failures). The high percentage of COQ spent on prevention and appraisal activities is consistent with efforts to ensure high quality laboratory results.