A private clinician has a patient she is worried about at six on a Friday evening. She needs a result before the weekend, the laboratory's website describes weekday collections, and there is no telephone number that is answered.
She sends the patient to a hospital instead. The laboratory could have helped and never had the chance.
The decision a laboratory is making
Whether urgent work is a defined service with criteria and a price, or an informal favour granted by whoever answers. The second version is unfair to staff and invisible to customers.
When a defined urgent service makes sense
Where the laboratory has the capability, where referrers regularly need it, where it can be staffed predictably and where it can be priced to cover the cost.
When it does not
Tests requiring capability the laboratory does not hold out of hours, work needing specialist authorisation that is unavailable, and anything that would compromise routine service.
Publish what qualifies as urgent
Specific criteria rather than a general invitation. Without them every request is urgent and the service means nothing.
Publish which tests are available urgently
Not all of them, and clinicians need the list. A referrer who knows what is possible uses the service correctly.
Publish the cut off times
By day, including Friday, Saturday and the position over public holidays. This is the practical information that decides whether somebody sends a sample or goes elsewhere.
Publish the timescale
How quickly an urgent sample is processed and reported, as a commitment rather than an aspiration. It is what the premium buys.
Publish the charge
Openly. Urgent work costs more to provide and clinicians accept a stated premium. Ambiguity is what makes them hesitate.
Publish how to request it
How to mark the sample, who to notify, what to write on the form and whether a telephone call is required, which is the process ground in referral and requisition questions from clinicians.
Publish the transport arrangement
Whether a special collection is possible, whether the practice delivers and where samples can be taken out of hours. It is frequently the constraint.
Publish how the result is delivered
To whom, by what route and what happens if the requester is unavailable. An urgent result that nobody reads is not an urgent service.
Have somebody answerable
A telephone number that reaches a person during the urgent hours. Anything else undermines the whole proposition.
Explain what happens when capacity is reached
An urgent service that quietly fails when three requests arrive together is worse than none, because a clinician has already stopped looking elsewhere. Saying how many urgent samples can be handled, and how quickly a referrer is told when the answer is no, lets somebody make other arrangements while there is still time.
Protect the routine service
By defining criteria, pricing properly and saying no where it does not qualify. A laboratory that treats everything as urgent delivers nothing on time, which is the wider problem in turnaround time questions clinicians ask constantly.
Route genuine emergencies correctly
Some situations belong elsewhere entirely and saying so quickly is the right answer, which is the triage discipline in emergency pet enquiries and where to send them and after hours emergency triage.
Getting started
Publish urgent criteria, available tests, cut offs, timescales and charges, then answer process questions at any hour while urgent clinical contact reaches a person. SpideyChat for healthcare organisations answers from your published pages. Try SpideyChat on your own site, or read about routing on the features page.