A survey of 19 clinical chemical laboratories, undertaken to determine what tests would normally be done in response to a number of common clinical requests (e.g. 'plasma electrolytes please'), revealed wide variations in test patterns. It is suggested that laboratories must bear some of the responsibility for unnecessary testing, and that new strategies are needed to persuade laboratories to adopt more cost-effective test patterns.
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Broughton et al. (1989) studied this question.
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