Laboratory management must understand and participate in cost accounting and budgeting to demonstrate fiscal responsibility for the resources allocated to department services. Laboratorians understand that "what gets measured gets managed" through their quality control (QC) and accreditation processes, so applying this concept to the budget process should make sense. Planning the budget and monitoring the data collected monthly aligns with what is done in the laboratory QC program. Similar to the QC program, trends and shifts can be spotted early, root causes identified, and corrections made either in process or a new budget created depending on the circumstances. Laboratory budget goals need to be set, assumptions made, forecasts set, and information charted and monitored. Not quite the same as a Levey-Jennings (LJ) Control Chart, but the idea is the same.
