A practice manager rings on Wednesday to ask about a sample sent on Monday. The same practice rings again on Thursday. Three other practices ring about samples that are progressing exactly as they should.
None of these calls are complaints. They are all the same question, and they exist because nobody published an answer.
Where the cost sits
Not in delayed results. In the chasing. Every call interrupts somebody, requires a look up, and produces the answer that everything is normal. Multiply it across a week and it is a full time role.
Why clinicians chase
They have a patient waiting, a clinic list to plan and no way of knowing whether three days is normal or a problem. In the absence of information, chasing is entirely rational behaviour.
Publish turnaround by test
Working days from receipt, not from despatch. It is the single most effective change a laboratory can make to its contact volume.
Publish it as a range
An honest range with a typical figure. A single number creates a deadline that generates a call the moment it passes.
Say what the clock starts from
Receipt at the laboratory, not collection from the practice. Clinicians assume the opposite and the confusion accounts for a large share of premature chasing.
Explain what makes some tests slower
Culture times, batching, specialist referral and confirmatory testing. Clinicians accept a fortnight when they understand why and chase a week when they do not.
Publish the batching schedule
Which tests run on which days and the cut offs. A sample arriving an hour after a batch has run waits for the next one, and a referrer who knows this plans differently.
Provide status rather than answers
A way to see where a sample is, without contacting anybody. It removes the call entirely rather than making it quicker to handle.
Notify rather than waiting to be asked
A message when a result is available, to the requesting clinician. Most chasing exists because nobody knew it had landed.
Publish the urgent route properly
What qualifies, how to request it, the cut off and what it costs. Without a published route, everything becomes urgent by default.
Explain how problems are communicated
A rejected sample, an unexpected delay or a referral. Silence is what generates the call, and proactive contact about a problem is received far better than an unanswered wait.
Explain the delivery method
Portal, integration, secure email or post, and how long each adds after reporting. A result reported on Tuesday that reaches a practice on Friday is a four day wait from the clinician's perspective.
Separate the patient contact
Where patients contact the laboratory directly, publish who they should ask and when. Patients chasing clinicians who are chasing the laboratory doubles the volume.
Review what is actually being asked
The chasing pattern shows exactly which tests need better published timescales, which is the practical work in results timing questions labs should answer up front.
Referral friction feeds the same problem
An unclear ordering process produces uncertainty at every stage, as in referral and requisition questions from clinicians.
Waiting is judged the same way in every sector
Customers and clinicians both react to silence rather than to duration, as in delivery time and stock questions furniture shoppers ask.
Getting started
Publish turnaround ranges by test with the clock defined, provide status and notify on completion, and ask any supplier the questions in AI chatbot security questions to ask a vendor. SpideyChat for healthcare organisations answers from your published pages. Try SpideyChat on your own site, or read about notifications on the features page.