Question for those in an outpatient office

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Hello! I work in an outpatient office, where we see our patients only 1 or 2 times a year. Our patients need to have labs done prior to their yearly follow up. We have had a constant problem with patients not doing their labs in time or not at all. They are given a lab slip at their yearly follow up for the next one (in a yr), which is why it is not fresh on patients' minds that it needs to be done (or where or when or how close to the appt). Sending out a lab slip to people closer to the appointment would be impossible.. too many patients.. same with phone call reminders.

I am curious others' thoughts on how to resolve this issue or what may be done in the practices you work at.

Thank you in advance!

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Ortho, ASC.

It really is asking a lot of patients to remember information given to them a whole year prior. Why is it "impossible" to set up a mail or phone reminder?

Every single doctor or dentist office visit I have scheduled gives me a phone reminder 24-48 hours in advance. Heck, even my hair salon extends that courtesy.

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Specializes in Family Medicine, Tele/Cardiac, Camp.

We do try to have patient's charts prepped at least a couple of days prior to their visits. If labs haven't been done for them, we call them and ask them to reschedule until after they've had labs done. Many have the labs done that very day and then are either able to come in to their appt or make an appt for the next week.

We have hundreds of patients lost to follow up every year and it's not uncommon for pt's to go even more than a year without being seen. I'm in an enormous practice too. But we've stressed to our patients that it's impossible for us to provide the care they need if they don't get labs done prior to their visit (if they're warranted of course).

Surely your practice must have at least an automated system reminding pt's of their upcoming appts? Maybe you could have the outgoing message changed to include a statement about needing to get labs done ahead of time. Best of luck.

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Specializes in Healthcare risk management and liability.

I am fortunate in that I only have to see the internist once a year, and I set a reminder in my Outlook to have my labs done before the actual annual visit. However, this same clinic, with over 450 providers, also sends out a reminder letter two weeks prior to a visit prompting the patient to get labs or other prep work done. It dramatically cuts down on the number of visits that are useless due to no labs, and therefore have to be rescheduled or have another followup visit. From that standpoint, the ROI greatly exceeds the nominal postage cost and other costs to send out the letters.

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We dedicate an MA to look over the charts for the following week to see who has done their labs and who hasn't. We call those patients who are missing labs and reschedule/cancel the appointment as necessary. It takes the MA like half a day twice a week to do that. The triage nurses may help follow up on phone calls.

I work in an infectious disease clinic where for a lot of our patients (HIV, hep B, etc), monitoring lab work is a huge bulk of their follow up. Our providers would prefer not to see the patients until the labs are done and have pushed to have someone responsible to review charts. It helps to have the dedicated staff hours.

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Thank you for the feed back. We have an automated appointment reminder that they are looking to see if they can add in mention of the labs, but I know I, myself, do not listen to those entirely when I get them.

Also, there is a specific test that needs to be done several days in advance, so doing them the same day isn't an option.

The MA's used to send out letters, but they claim they have no time to reinitiate that.

We will see how it goes! I was just curious what everyone else's practices do.

Thank you!

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