The most heavily weighted aspect of the accreditation process is the review of representative cases and their corresponding final reports. This crucial aspect of the process allows for evaluation of the technical and interpretative quality of the laboratory, as a whole. Because this aspect of the application carries such significant weight in the final decision, extreme care should be taken by laboratory staff in selecting only the laboratory's best work. To help assure this, the ICAEL has recently published the actual document used by the application reviewers when evaluating submitted case studies and their corresponding final reports. The ICAEL Review Form is now available as a preparatory tool to applicant laboratories and can be accessed from the Sample Documents page on the ICAEL web site [www.icael.org/icael/apply/sampledocs.htm].

Equally as important as the representative cases submitted are their corresponding final reports. One of the most frequent causes for a delayed accreditation decision is incomplete or non-standardized final reports. All physicians reporting in a laboratory must utilize a standard report format and the reports must contain each one of the elements outlined in Section 4 (Examination Interpretation) of the 2007 ICAEL Standards, Part II Echocardiography Laboratory Operations - Adult Transthoracic Echocardiography Testing and Section 3 (Elements and Components of Examination Performance) of the 2007 ICAEL Standards, Part III Echocardiography Laboratory Operations - Adult Transesophageal Testing. Utilization of the ICAEL Reviewer Form, as discussed above, can serve as an excellent internal review mechanism for laboratories evaluating their final report content prior to application submission.

Laboratory staff members with questions about preparing their applications for submission are encouraged to contact the ICAEL at 800-838-2110 or by email using the online staff directory published at www.icael.org.

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