Very Interesting comments regarding this sensitive issue. Of course in a perfect world every physician would love to personally call every patient to relay their test results. However, as many of us know the world is not perfect. There are two main reasons why practices use this type of test relay system. The first is opportunity cost. According to a 1999 study, the average of times an office tries to call a patient to relay the information is 6 times before the patient receives the result. Multiply that times number of patients and you get the idea, especially at larger hospital systems. Secondly and probably the more importantly is that it will reduce the physician’s mal-practice risk. Right now if a Dr. calls the patient relays inconclusive results from a biopsy that require the patient to follow-up with another specialist, the only documentation that the physician has is a manual note or a text in their EMR that he or she called the patient. If that patient does not follow-up with a specialist and they develop a condition a few years later, one of the questions that will be asked is whether or not they had preventative tests performed to prevent the condition. With today's mal-practice attorneys that manual note to the patients’ charts (paper or electronic) is still hard to verify. With the phone or internet retrieval the practice is able to monitor if and when every pending test result has been retrieved. Over-all those types of systems, save time, money, cut down on mal-practice risk and most importantly increase patient safety.
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Very Interesting comments regarding this sensitive issue. Of course in a perfect world every physician would love to personally call every patient to relay their test results. However, as many of us know the world is not perfect. There are two main reasons why practices use this type of test relay system. The first is opportunity cost. According to a 1999 study, the average of times an office tries to call a patient to relay the information is 6 times before the patient receives the result. Multiply that times number of patients and you get the idea, especially at larger hospital systems. Secondly and probably the more importantly is that it will reduce the physician’s mal-practice risk. Right now if a Dr. calls the patient relays inconclusive results from a biopsy that require the patient to follow-up with another specialist, the only documentation that the physician has is a manual note or a text in their EMR that he or she called the patient. If that patient does not follow-up with a specialist and they develop a condition a few years later, one of the questions that will be asked is whether or not they had preventative tests performed to prevent the condition. With today's mal-practice attorneys that manual note to the patients’ charts (paper or electronic) is still hard to verify. With the phone or internet retrieval the practice is able to monitor if and when every pending test result has been retrieved. Over-all those types of systems, save time, money, cut down on mal-practice risk and most importantly increase patient safety.
September 3, 2009 - 12:46pmThis Comment
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