Page 25 - Registrar Orientation Manual 2016

Ref No: 1452
Version: 02
Guideline
Title: Electronic Result Acknowledgement:
The Responsibilities of Consultants and the Delegation of Responsibility to RMOs
Manual Classification:
Administration and Clinical
Effective Date: 18 July 2014
Expiry Date:
18 July 2017
Keywords: (supply 5 keywords - search engine)
Facilitator sign/date
Sponsor sign/date
Process Authorised sign/date
Paul Reeve
Head of Medicine
Tom Watson
Chief Medical Advisor
Mo Neville
Assistant Group Manager Quality and Patient Safety
© Waikato DHB, July 2014
1. Purpose of this guideline
The purpose of this guideline is to ensure the efficient and timely electronic acknowledgement of results for Waikato DHB patients. It outlines the responsibility Senior Medical Officers (SMOs) have for acknowledgement and how that may be delegated to Resident Medical Officers (RMOs).
2. Principles of Electronic Acknowledgement
All laboratory and radiology results should be acknowledged electronically using the Clinical Workstation (CWS). Hard copies of laboratory and radiology results will no longer be generated.
Electronic Acknowledgement is the electronic equivalent of signing the hardcopy paper result and acknowledgement implies that any action required has been taken or has been organised.
If results are not acknowledged there may be uncertainty as to whether the result has been seen and any required action taken. For this reason no results should be left unacknowledged.
The expectation is that all results are acknowledged within 3 working days of being finalised. Any results not acknowledged within 10 days of being finalised would be considered non-compliance with acceptable clinical practice, and will be investigated by the team management.
To facilitate timeliness of acknowledgement, doctors should set up an unacknowledged work list.
3. Process of acknowledgement
Clinicians must log in to CWS in their own name to ensure the responsible clinician is identified. Results should normally be acknowledged as soon as they have been viewed and action taken. All clinicians should set up an unacknowledged results work list and check it regularly.
See Unacknowledged Work List, Electronic Acknowledgement and One Page Primer for details.
If you receive a result that has been sent to you incorrectly you should either send the result/report to the responsible clinician (if known), or back to the Laboratory or Radiology, who will re-route to the correct clinician or team.
There are guidelines to assist with this process on the Intranet. See the ‘Flow Chart’.
4. Principles of Responsibility of SMOs for Electronic Acknowledgement
SMOs are ultimately responsible for the management of patients in hospital under their care or seen in clinic under their name. Having responsibility for patients includes taking responsibility for acknowledgement of results and actions required after tests performed on their patients.
While it is generally considered that the requestor of a test should take responsibility for checking and acting on the result, in hospital practice many tests will not be requested by the SMO.
Tests may be requested by team RMOs, nurses acting under delegated authority, or performed during the ED assessment but responsibility for action passes on to the duty or admitting SMO.
RMOs will acknowledge the majority of results and they do this under the delegated authority and it is the responsibility of the SMO to ensure that results do not go unacknowledged.
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