Excused Failure to Participate in a Testing Event for a Particular

6056 - Excused Failure to Participate in a Testing Event for a Particular Analyte (Rev. 230; Issued: 07-11-25; Effective: 07-11-25; Implementation: 07-11-25) If a laboratory has received a score of zero due to failure to participate in a testing event for an analyte or subspecialty without analytes, the laboratory may request excused participation. This request is usually made when instrumentation is inoperative or reagents for testing are unavailable during the testing event. (See §493.845(c)(1)-(3)) An excused participation may be granted only if: • Patient testing for the specialty, subspecialty, analyte was suspended during the time frame allotted for testing and reporting of PT results; • The laboratory notifies SA/CMS and the PT program within the time frame for submitting PT results of the suspension of patient testing for that specialty, subspecialty, or analyte and of the circumstances that led to failure to perform testing on the PT samples; and • The laboratory participated in the previous two testing events for the specialty, subspecialty, or analyte. If the SA/CMS accepts the circumstances given by the laboratory for not participating, the score of 100 percent given by the program is allowed to remain. If the SA/CMS does not accept the circumstances given by the laboratory to justify its lack of participation, the SA/CMS will notify the PT program to change the 100 percent score to a zero to indicate lack of participation. Only the PT program can change a laboratory’s PT score in the PT Monitoring System which will then be reflected in the CASPER reports.