Final answer:
CLIA protects patients by ensuring accurate laboratory test results, while OSHA protects workers by ensuring safe and healthy working conditions by setting and enforcing workplace safety standards.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) are both federal regulatory standards, but they protect different groups. CLIA primarily ensures the accuracy, reliability, and timeliness of patient test results by regulating laboratories, while OSHA is focused on ensuring the safety and health of workers by setting and enforcing protective workplace safety and health standards.
OSHA is responsible for worker safety in the United States, by providing regulations that employers must follow to ensure a safe and healthful working environment. This includes measures such as providing fall protection, preventing exposure to infectious diseases and harmful chemicals, ensuring the safety of workers in confined spaces, and requiring training for certain dangerous jobs in a language workers can understand.
Employers are mandated to comply with OSHA standards, which can include keeping their workplaces free of serious recognized hazards as per the General Duty Clause of the OSH Act.
On the other hand, CLIA protects patients by ensuring that all laboratory tests are carried out correctly and produce accurate results. The Department of Health and Human Services oversees the administration of CLIA, which applies to all entities that perform laboratory testing on specimens derived from humans for the purpose of providing information for the diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of any disease or impairment, or the assessment of the health of human beings.