Q: Describe what you need to do to meet the standard for accountability of lab results.
Jim Stilley: It’s required to contact patients and let them know the results of their labs and ensure they understand those results. It makes sense why that would be required, but the problem is that it is not the surgery center that contacts the patient, it’s the physician. In this way, accrediting bodies are putting some accountability back on the facility. It’s easy for us to show surveyors that labs our physicians ordered were sent back to them. It’s difficult for us to prove that our physicians contacted the patient. There’s no doubt the physicians at this surgery center are receiving the lab results, but when you have as many physicians as I do, which is more than 80, and because my facility isn’t a licensed entity that can call the patient, it becomes very challenging.
Q: Besides establishing that physicians contact the patients, what other challenges arise from the fact the surgery center is responsible for that conversation?
JS: What’s not easy is proving to surveyors that the physician took all those lab results and spoke to every patient and explained to them what the results mean. For example, a physician has to explain to a patient what dysplasia means and ensure the patient understands that.
Q: What changes needed to take place to better document physicians were contacting their patients with lab results and having conversations with them about the results?
JS: I set up a policy that says all physicians have to contact their patients, but what the surveyors had suggested to us was implementing an active information system that verifies that not only did the surgeons order specimens from the labs but also that they received them. There is also an algorithm that can be installed that evidences surgeons received the results and also spoke with the patients to be more compliant with that standard. It’s not enough to some surveyors that I was able to show on my fax machine that I had sent the lab results to the physicians.
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