Section 1: Respondent laboratory and commissioning
Q1: Please provide details of the location of the laboratory responsible for completing your histology workloads, as well as the district that you served for the years indicated.
• Laboratory: This should be the name/location of the laboratory completing most of your histology workloads – if your histology work is completed by a different hospital, please indicate this.
• District: Please indicate the unitary authority, county, metropolitan district, non-metropolitan district, integrated care board, or other authority that commissions NHS services from your hospital.
Section 2: Histology workloads
Q2: Please provide details of histology workloads (total cases/total slides) for the years indicated. For slides this should be the total volume including special stains and immunohistochemistry, but should not include cytology, if these cannot be easily filtered out, please indicate this in the free text box. Should you be unable to provide this data for any of the years indicated please indicate this in the free text box. If providing an estimated response, please note this (along with likely error factor expressed as a percentage) in the free text comments box.
Section 3: Histology staffing
Q3: Please provide details of the histology staffing for the years indicated (full time equivalents). This should only be those staff involved in histology, but may include admin staff (e.g., secretaries) if they play a significant role in the completion of the histology workload. This is divided into two areas (laboratory and support/reporting). This should be a total of staff in post only and should not include unfilled vacancies.
• Laboratory and support (LAB): Those staff involved in the preparation of laboratory samples – including admin and quality support roles – this should include histology secretaries, medical laboratory assistants, biomedical scientists, this should also include any laboratory senior staff/managers in histology.
• Reporting (REP): This should include those staff involved in the preparation of histology reports; this should include pathologists, registrars, clinical scientists, and consultant biomedical scientists.
Where staff numbers have changed through a calendar year (e.g., new staff recruited/staff leaving), please provide an approximate average and note this in the comments box. Should you be unable to provide this data for any of the years indicated please indicate this in the free text box. If providing an estimated response, please note this (along with likely error factor expressed as a percentage) in the free text comments box.
Sections 4: Histology turnaround times
Q4: Please provide details of turnaround times (TATs) for histology for the years indicated. There are two response options for each year; average histology TAT in days, and % of cases reported in 10 days. Please provide both data sets where possible, however, where this is not possible, please note this in the free text comments box. The TAT response should always be from the date the sample was collected to the date when the initial diagnostic report was authorised/released. This data should be for histology only, however, if your data includes NG-Cytology, please just note this in the free text comments. Should you be unable to provide this data for any of the years indicated please indicate this in the free text box. If providing an estimated response, please note this (along with likely error factor expressed as a percentage) in the free text comments box.
Section 5: Histology budgets
Q 5: Please provide details on histology budgets for the years indicated, this should be the total budget for delivering histopathology services in the years indicated. If other services such as NG-Cytology are included as part of this budget, and it is not possible to separate them please indicate this in the free text comments. Should you be unable to provide this data for any of the years indicated please indicate this in the free text box. If providing an estimated response, please note this (along with likely error factor expressed as a percentage) in the free text comments box.
