09 Jun Quality Assurance under ‘lockdown’

On-farm audits of OVs were suspended at the end of March due to the restrictions imposed to limit the spread of Covid-19. In their place XL Farmcare have implemented a process of ‘virtual auditing’ to ensure that test quality remains high during this time. Test chart submissions are being monitored for the percentage of reactions being noted by individual OVs to establish base line rates of reactions to injected tuberculin. This allows some comparison between OVs across farms, regions and practices and this can help highlight OVs that may not be achieving a true intradermal injection of tuberculin or are failing to detect reactions at day two of a test. Telephone surveys of farmers who have recently had a TB test are also being carried out at a higher rate than usual in order to assess satisfaction with the service provided to them by their practice and to help pick up on any obvious deviations from the expected standards.