Need for Improved Communication Channels between Clinical Labs and Users

Three days ago, I participated in awebinar sponsored by theAssociation for Pathology Informatics andSunquest Information Systems. The overarching topic addressed for this (and later sessions) was the challenge for pathology informaticians of working in large multi-hospital health systems. The first of the two subtopics covered in this first session by Dr. Brian Jackson ofARUP Laboratories was the need for effective communication in hospitals beyond the EHR and LIS. He quoted a survey of primary care practitioners indicating that they rarely consulted with lab personnel about test ordering and test result interpretation. This experience may not necessarily translate to the experience of other specialists. However, I do believe that communications between the clinical labs and test-ordering physician and nurses could be improved.I am sure that all labs in larger hospitals have some variant of a lab handbook or test directory posted for users. Here is the link to the publication of the University of Michigan hospital andhere is the link to its lab test directory of ARUP. It's irrefutable that these directories are valuable resources for test-ordering clinicians. But let me restate the obvious. It may be difficult, on occasion, for a clinician to ferret out an informed answer about a particular test from such an online resource. In some cases, it would be far more efficient to call the labs and speak with the expert about a particular test. This ...
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