Western Pathology Quality Assurance Association (WPQAA), a not for profit organization of pathologists and laboratory scientists, originally formed in 1977 under the auspices of the College of American Pathologists (CAP).  An initial focus was developing a multi-analyte, multilevel quality-control serum pool combined with data reduction for participating laboratories.

For more than 30 years, WPQAA has been using royalty revenues from sales of these quality-control sera to run quality-assurance training programs for laboratory personnel. In 1997, the CAP ended involvement and Beckman Coulter, supplier of the QC sera, volunteered to provide the data and analytical support to WPQAA. In 2009, Beckman Coulter ceased production of the QC sera. Since that time, WPQAA has turned to a variety of foundations to fund its mission. Thanks to a Beckman Coulter Foundation grant, we will be funding additional scholarship endowments as described on this site.

In today’s laboratory climate of declining availability of medical technologists, WPQAA believes assisting laboratories to become fully staffed could achieve improvement in laboratory quality. Consequently, WPQAA is committed to endow medical technologist scholarships to attract students to the field.