Quality Assurance: Are We Doing a Good Job?

When I started in this industry in 1984, I was amazed to find out that there wasn’t any federal or state oversight in the production of orthoses or prostheses. You had to be state licensed to cut hair or even drive a hearse, but not to make a prosthetic leg. The federal government had some regulatory oversight of just about every industry I had ever been involved in—electronics manufacturing, food services, and even the auto body repair business. It seemed odd to me that an industry that is so central to the health and well-being of our patients and presents so much potential for injury would just be “winging it.”