The Digital Rectal Exam and the Joint Commission: Oh, the Irony

Since 1988, hospitals have been required to centrally maintain appropriate quality-control and test records for point-of-care testing. Recall the bygone days of spinning a hematocrit, the bedside urine human chorionic gonadotrophin test, the wet mount, or even the “whiff” test? In 2003, the Joint Commission issued even more stringent regulations, including one for bedside testing of stool for occult blood. The new regulation requires physicians to manually document in a central log each patient’s demographic information, fecal occult blood (FOB) testing card number, reagent lot number, and FOB testing quality-control test results; alternatively, physicians can send a confirmatory FOB testing card to a central laboratory.

These authors compar…