Western Pathology Quality Assurance Association (WPQAA), a nonprofit 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 sera 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, present supplier of QC sera, volunteered to provide the data and analytical support to WPQAA.

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.