Lab results withheld until after physician review?

Not in CA, but I've never been able to see lab results until after the physician has released them.

My thought is that they do this to allow them to comment on any abnormal values.

That is standard practice at any clinic I've worked at. It is to keep patients from getting bad results by just reading a piece of paper. Think if you had a positive HIV test or malignant biopsy result, a provider needs to sit down and discuss that with you face to face. Since clerical office staff can't interpret results or decide what warrants physician intervention it is a blanket rule that no results are released until authorized by the physician.

Yes, it's legal. Facilities have up to 30 days to release a patient's chart to them after the patient has requested their records through the proper channel (usually HIM).

Hmm.

When have they told you the release of results through the clinic/physician might be expected?

I would think explaining expected wait times to patients would be utterly routine in the situation you describe, since many patients are likely to have your same concerns knowing that the physician is only on-site 2x/mo. If this clinic hasn't given you a reasonable time frame in which to expect the review-and-release process to have taken place, well, that's inappropriate. And probably causes darn near as much anxiety for some people as just getting a bad result.

Thank you for the replies, folks. I was able to access the lab results electronically directly through Quest Labs. So I'm good. Thanks all!

Wrote out a post recommending that very thing since that's what I do if I want to receive lab results (request them from the facility that performed the test) but then erased it because I wasn't sure if it was specific to my little corner of the world/situation.

Rationale or not, the practice of which you speak isn't doing themselves any favors in the customer service department.

Glad you got your results.