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After several high-profile scandals that damaged public confidence in the accuracy of medical tests in Canada, leading medical organizations have unveiled the first steps in a plan to fix the system and prevent more patients from being wrongly diagnosed.

The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the Canadian Association of Pathologists announced Tuesday the creation of a national body designed to produce uniform standards for hospital laboratories across the country. The aim is to reduce errors and increase accountability.

The move comes after several years of intense criticism of botched cancer tests in areas such as Newfoundland and pleas from some of the country's leading pathologists to develop national standards for hospital labs.

The new body, called the Canadian Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Leadership Council, will be tasked with producing guidelines for cancer and other medical tests to help ensure all pathologists, even those operating alone in remote communities, are using the latest and best practices. The council will also help ensure pathologists and lab technicians are using the right equipment and have up-to-date training on new methods or developments in their field.

Andrew Padmos, chief executive officer of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, said the new council will "directly impact the way diagnoses are made in laboratories across Canada."

The Canadian Association of Pathologists said the creation of the council and testing standards will be a major step toward ensuring hospital labs produce high-quality results.

But the guidelines will not be binding, which raises the questions of how widely they will be followed and whether they will be effective.

Dr. Padmos said while the new council doesn't have the regulatory authority to create binding regulations, the medical profession tends to adhere to guidelines that carry the weight and endorsement of top medical organizations.

"[The standards]will function quite a bit more strongly than simple guidelines," Dr. Padmos said.

More than a dozen of the country's top medical organizations were involved in creating the new council.

In 2005, it was revealed that hundreds of Newfoundland women had received incorrect breast cancer test results over an eight-year period, which may have led some women to miss important, life-saving treatment. The controversy led to an inquiry that eventually identified major problems throughout the province's pathology system.

Since then, other testing scandals have emerged across the country, putting the quality and safety of medical tests into question.

Although few patients will ever see a pathologist when they visit a hospital, the results from pathology labs account for up to 80 per cent of the medical decisions doctors make.

Despite their important role, Canadian pathologists operate under a patchwork system that doesn't ensure uniform standards are being applied to critical medical tests. It's a serious problem because the field of pathology is growing in complexity, making it more challenging to accurately interpret tests.

Many pathologists, particularly those in remote locations, also work alone with no backup system to double-check the accuracy of their results or test the quality of their work. In addition, Canada has a shortage of pathologists, meaning many in the field are facing increasing demands to read more tests in a day.

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