Home Forums Discussions General Discussion AC and Lab Report/Record

Hi! This is my first post. I am presently employed but waiting for the perfect storm to turn in my resignation letter. I downloaded AC a month ago and like its functions.

In our city, we mostly use Tricore as our lab for blood test. They have a fairly good website where we can get lab report. Can I use that as my patient's "lab record"?

Let's say I sent Mr. Smith for his lipids. He is here today for follow up. I open his AC chart, then also open Tricore's website and bring up the recent lipids. We talk about it, make some decisions and see him back for follow up later. The lab report remains at Tricore and not incorporated into his AC chart.

Doing that will save me from trabsferring data into his record and not occupying too much space in AC. Does it make sense? Any legal issues?

Thanks,

This will be problematic when another provider requests records, you need to send him to a specialist, etc. as you will have to log on and print eac of them. I would talk with tricore and see if they would be interested in developing an interface with AC.

I don't see any problem with it, assuming the labs are equally available to the specialist or other provider. And as long as you document any significant abnormal (or normal) values upon which a decision was reached. It should be easy for a patient to get the labs from the laboratory if needed for transfer as well.

IMHO

Interesting question.

I am having a real problem with all of the internet based records, and having the labs out there somewhere, out of your control makes me uncomfortable. My 2 cents:
1- see about the interface. Then the labs are in the chart automatically and they are granular (searchable) data that you can use to practice better medicine. They are part of your permanent record and no one can delete them or alter them at a later time. (I am NOT paranoid, except maybe just a little). Entering the abnormals would do, unless you later need a normal, now "lost" when an abnormal from some other source points to you as the deep pocket who failed to make a diagnosis.
2- Print them and scan them, your staff can do it with only a small cost in time and materials and will a little more IT savvy you can print as a .pdf to the Fax Writer, and import directly from that file, saving paper and copier costs.
3- having the labs all under your thumb so to speak is REALLY helpful when the record gets bigger. for the label of the lab entry I can add things like, "INR=2.1" or "Annual labs, PSA=2.3" and then a long time later, with a lot of entries, I can tell right away if I need to reopen that lab and see it again.

Ok, maybe it was not worth the whole 2 cents, but dollar really ain't what it used to be.

I have to agree with Martin. Having the data in one place will make for better overall care. Also, the locations for obtaining labs in your city may change any day, or patients may have studies done in other cities and then you will find yourself having to go here and there to find them. Collating and correlating this data into one package in my mind would be the only sensible thing to do. And, I would not worry about the amount of "space" this data will be consuming. Your imported items folder will still consume only a small portion of your disk space. I have almost 22 years of charts scanned in and my imported items folder is still under 6 GB.

Leslie

Listen to Martin and Leslie there. Get the interface and download labs directly into AC. You can write your comments on the labs right in AC and then print&send them to the patient if you'd like. The labs don't take up much disk space, and besides disk space is cheap compared to office space (file cabinets) and the time to manually organize things (if you factor in the compensation rate). And, suppose you have a patient whose labs aren't through Tricore? Then you'd have 2 sites to go to.

Also, you would need to check the Tricore site. LabCorp also has a website to get advanced lab results, but when printing them out they clearly claim they are not a substitute for the official Lab Corp printout, or imported lab.

I came across an interesting problem. My lab interface puts them in the inbox. Normally, I sign them off, then click "Yes" to delete the lab message from the mailbox. If I click "No", it stays in the mailbox and when I click on it again the "Sign Off" box is grayed out. However, if I then try to delete the lab from the mailbox it says "This lab is not yet signed off". I suspect it really is just a quirk. Do I go ahead and delete it anyway? Is there another way to deal with this? Am I doing something wrong here? (Well, I mean ANOTHER thing wrong)

I have had the same thing happen AmazingDave. I went ahead and deleted and the one you already signed off on remains signed off. Just a glitch I think.