How often is External Quality Assessment (EQA) performed?

• A. Every year
• B. Every 3 years
• C. Every 5 years
• D. Every 7 years

Answer: (C)

External Quality Assessment is a periodic check that provides an independent measure of performance by comparing your outputs to standardized external benchmarks. The frequency is set to balance the need for timely validation with practical considerations like cost, effort, and the likelihood of meaningful improvement between cycles.

Choosing a cadence of every five years offers a reasonable window to implement changes, collect enough performance data, and demonstrate sustained capability before the next external review. If the interval were too short, such as yearly, the process could become overly burdensome and may detect only minor, normal variation rather than meaningful trends. A shorter cadence might also divert resources from core operations. Conversely, waiting too long, like seven years, risks significant drift in processes, tools, or controls going unchecked for too long.

So, performing External Quality Assessment every five years provides a balanced, practical schedule for external validation, which is why that interval is the selected answer in this context.