ABSTRACT
A service level agreement (SLA) is an agreement between two departments in a hospital where one is providing a service to the other. The purpose of a pathology SLA is to allow the pathology service to focus on the requirements of its customers, i.e. users of the laboratory service. When SLAs were introduced into our hospital in 1995, discussions with clinical directors and general managers showed that they had a lack of understanding of their requirements from the pathology service. In addition, observations at departmental clinical meetings indicated that the requirements of the pathology service were rapidly changing. Within the SLA, agreement should be reached with users over the requirements and standards they should achieve when using the pathology services. Similar monitoring systems will need to be established to identify volume of tests for each clinical directorate. This is important to identify, even if no cross-charging for tests is carried out.
