Lab Results Review & Reporting (LR3)

Keeping track of pending labs in the Calgary Zone

Patients who are discharged from hospital with pending lab results are at risk of having clinically important results go unnoticed. Discharged patients typically do not remain on a care provider’s SCM Patient List, and therefore any flags for new results may not be seen in a timely way. The Lab Results Review & Reporting (LR3) project is an initiative within the Calgary Zone that was launched in response to this problem.

In an effort to improve the continuity of care for patients, the LR3 project worked with a number of stakeholders to develop processes to ensure the lab tests that you ordered (and are therefore responsible for) can be reliably tracked. There is a process that individual physicians can employ, and there is a guide for physician teams to help them develop a collaborative process.

Documents

Links

Individuals

LR3 Process for Individual Physicians

There is a simple solution for individual physicians working in an urban Calgary Zone site. A physician can easily set up this process in SCM to reliably ensure they are alerted to new lab results that arrive after a patient has been discharged.

The LR3 process is for more than just labs: It can also be used to track pending results for Diagnostic Imaging tests!

Resources

Here is a short video that demonstrates how quick and user-friendly the process is:

LR3 Special Lists for Patients Discharged with Labs Still Pending

Teams

LR3 Process for Physician Teams

A team process for managing pending results, in its simplest form, typically has two components: A Personal Follow-Up List for you to keep track while on-service, and the Team Lab Follow-Up List for those results not expected to come back until after you’re off-service.

  • The Personal Follow-Up List, which will resemble the LR3 process for individual physicians (see previous tab), is for you to keep track while on-service.
  • The Team Lab Follow-Up List is for those results not expected to come back until after you’re off-service. Since each team functions differently, how this list works will also be unique to your team. This process will need to be configured to suit the business processes of your team.

For an example of how one team set up their process, you can view the full ACH Hospital Pediatrician Lab Follow-Up Process instructions or the ACH Hospital Team Process summary.

When you are ready to start planning your team’s process, download the LR3 Team Process Development Guide.

Evaluation

Demonstrating Success

Updated March 2017

The goal of the LR3 project is to reduce the number of post-discharge lab results that are not being viewed. This requires more physicians employing a process that allows for notification of new results.