Originally published July 27 2005
Study finds doctors are often unaware of hospital test results
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Patients may be seeing increased risk of complications from hospital stays, a study shows, because, as Forbes reports, doctors often don't see the results of hospital tests before they are called on to make important suggestions about patient care.
Many doctors don't follow up on test results pending for patients who have been released from a hospital, running the risk of missing some major medical problems, a new report contends.
At two American hospitals, the study authors found that doctors didn't know about 65 of 105 test results that came back after patients had been discharged.
The percentage of missed results "is large enough that we're concerned about it and want to do something about it," said study co-author Dr. Christopher Roy, associate director of the hospitalist program at Brigham & Women's Hospital, in Boston.
Forty-three percent of the time, post-discharge test results were abnormal; in about 10 percent of cases they suggested serious problems requiring doctors to take action, according to the study.
Many doctors failed to respond to the survey, but those who did provided information on what they recalled about 105 of the tests, according to the study.
Despite the findings, Roy said the "big picture" of patients is being transmitted to the primary-care physicians who pick up where the hospital doctors leave off.
"But on occasion, a lab test or two may be overlooked.
Over a year's time, this could be a patient safety issue," he said.
Why are some doctors failing to focus on the test results?
The problem isn't the transmission of the results to the doctor, Roy said.
Instead, it's making sure doctors pay attention when they're coping with "reams" of data on each patient, he said.
One possible remedy is to set up systems to electronically alert doctors when a potentially dangerous test result comes in.
"They should never assume that no news is good news when it comes to waiting for a test result," he said.
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