According to a study in the June 22 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, "Primary care clinicians and their staffs sometimes fail to inform all patients of the results of lab or screening tests -- or fail to keep records that patients were informed and thus have no proof."

For more information on this issue, here is link to the related WebMD article by Bill Hendrick. 

The study included a review of 1,889 abnormal test results (selected at random) and found that for approximately 7.1% of the tests, either the result was not communicated to the patient, or there was no record that the patient had been informed.

The article does not address specific solutions that offer patients secure, phone-based access to lab test results.  For example, at least one LabRetriever customer uploads between 450 and 500 lab results each day.  LabRetriever also provides an accurate record of those patients have not yet accessed their lab results.  This informs healthcare providers as to which patients require follow-up.

Some of our customers, including Del Mar Family Practice of San Diego, have implemented LabRetriever and ReminderPro as an integrated solution.  ReminderPro can automatically call patients to inform them that their lab results are available. A patient can then transfer to LabRetriever and access those lab results immediately with a secure access code.

According to the article above, Atlanta internist Sandra Fryhofer, MD, past president of the 120,000-member American College of Physicians said, "(I'm) glad they did a study like this that uncovers this problem. It's a wake-up call to doctors and patients".

Well, ReminderPro does wake-up calls too.