Study: Despite EHR, Patients in Dark on Test Results

HDM Breaking News, June 23, 2009

A study of more than 5,400 patient records from 23 physician practices across the nation shows that physicians often fail to inform patients of abnormal test results, or to document that their patients were informed.

Use of an electronic medical record did not improve reporting rates, and even increased failure rates if the practice did not have good processes for managing test results, according to researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.

Overall, one in 14 abnormal test results were not adequately reported to patients. In some practices, the failure rate was close to zero, but was as high as 25% in other practices, according to an article published June 22 in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Very few physician practices studied had explicit rules for managing test results, according to Lawrence Casalino, M.D., chief of the division of outcomes and effectiveness research in the Department of Public Health at Weill Cornell. In many practices, each physician devised his or her own method, he noted.

The study suggests five simple processes for better managing test results:
* all test results are routed to the responsible physician;
* the physician signs off on all results;
* the practice informs patients of all results whether normal or abnormal;
* the practice documents that the patient has been informed; and
* patients are told to call after a certain time interval if they have not been notified.

Text of the article, Frequency of Failure to Inform Patients of Clinically Significant Outpatient Test Results, is available at http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/169/12/1123.

--Joseph Goedert