Health Care Insiders

Family Physicians — Testing Positive for Lab Result Errors

by Jen on August 15th, 2008

The New York Times reports on a study that family doctors are making an awful lot of mistakes when it comes to routine lab tests such as blood draws. The study, published originally in the journal Quality and Safety in Health Care, was conducted by physicians in the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) research network. It found that errors in testing can happen at any point along the way, from ordering a test to failing to notify a patient when the test results return.

These results aren’t that surprising, but what concerns me the most is the cost-saving potential of getting the correct test ordered, completed, and reported to both physician and patient in a short period of time. We waste a huge amount of money in our health system because test results are often not available or are vague (for example, the physician sends the patient a note with the words “positive” or “negative,” or otherwise lacking clarity, such as “within normal limits.”) If that patient must go to another provider or if the patient lands in the emergency department, that facility must redo the test, even if the patient can say “hey, they told me that my count for [insert test here] was a little bit high.”

Part of this problem is the lack of electronic medical record (EMR) implementation across the board.  If the only copy of your lab results is sitting in a manilla folder at your primary care physician’s office, the ER doctor will never know that your cholesterol is dangerously high. Part of the problem is also patients. The idea of a Personal Health Record, or PHR, that would contain this information is still a bit pie-in-the-sky… although companies such as Microsoft, with HealthVault, and Google Health are promising an EMR/PHR revolution through their products.

Regardless of the technology barriers, the physician ordering a test should have the responsibility for getting the result back and contacting the patient as soon as possible, whether by telephone or mail (or another secure avenue). Not only is it poor customer service to leave patients hanging (or to not ever tell them their results, letting many assume they are fine when there might be a problem), it’s poor business practice, and it can lead to overspending and overtesting.

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POSTED IN: Health Care Costs, Hospitals and Doctors, IT and health care