The ASHI Accreditation Review Board (ARB) has been going through the re-approval process with CMS over the last year and during the course of the review have made a few small changes to ARB policies & procedures. One of which deals with laboratory inspections, and the particular citations/deficiencies recorded.
We removed the designations for "partial" or "complete" citations. CMS recommended this change backed by their “a deficiency is a deficiency, period” perspective and the ARB agreed. Going forward, inspectors will not see an option to mark a deficiency partial or complete and will instead be encouraged to be as detailed as possible in the “comments” box for each citation – completeness, severity, frequency, etc. can be explained there.