Improving communication of critical laboratory results: know your process

Improving communication of critical laboratory results: know your process.

Many hospitals strive to implement systems that allow for timely and reliable communication of critical laboratory results (CLRs) to the responsible physician. With recent advances in health information technology (IT), an increasing number of institutions are turning to solutions that involve varying degrees of automation to streamline this process. The use of automation to improve the efficie...

Absolute band counts in febrile infants: know your laboratory.

It was the impression of 1 of the authors that band counts in febrile infants < or =60 days of age were much higher as reported from the clinical laboratory at Children's Hospital Medical Center of Akron, Ohio, than they had been at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York. Absolute band counts (ABC) from 119 febrile infants < or =60 days of age seen in the emergency department of Childr...

Improving response to critical laboratory results with automation: results of a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of an automatic alerting system on the time until treatment is ordered for patients with critical laboratory results. DESIGN Prospective randomized controlled trial. INTERVENTION A computer system to detect critical conditions and automatically notify the responsible physician via the hospital's paging system. PATIENTS Medical and surgical inpatients at a ...

Managing Process Diversity While Improving Your Practices

Repeat testing of critical laboratory test results.

To the Editor.—Recent literature has explored the value of repeat testing of alert or critical laboratory test results, as illustrated in the article by Toll et al. Using a large data set for selected tests, that article makes the point that repeat testing is rarely of value. All too often, laboratories retest results that are considered ‘‘critical’’ because of a purely emotional desire to avoi...