You can track your 'lab' work to review all the laboratory work you are awaiting in your practice.

Chart screen

The lab work pop-up on the chart has been simplified to ask which lab is required.

The pop-up will only appear if there is more than one lab in the specialist list. The cost can still be entered using the edit service screen, but the due date field is no longer present, as the appointment book now controls this.

You can disable the pop-up via user settings.

Appointment book

When booking or editing an appointment, the reception team has access to controls that allow them to view and set the status of lab work for the appointment.

The available states are:

• Required - awaiting return from the lab.
• Ready - returned from the lab.
• N/A - lab work is not applicable for this appointment.

If the clinician has charted a lab work item, the appointment will default to ‘Required', otherwise it will default to ‘N/A’. The reception team have full control to override this status, it does not have to be triggered from the chart.

If the clinician chooses a lab on the popup or the practice has only one lab configured, the lab will also be defaulted on the appointment screen. If necessary, the receptionist can also change the lab.

Tracking lab work

Upcoming lab work appointments can be seen in the new lab work tab under the appointment book. They are shown in appointment order with the closest appointments at the top.

The list defaults to showing appointments with work still in the Required state, but the status filter in the bottom left can be changed to show, work that is only Ready or both. When lab work is returned from the lab, the reception team can find the appointment in the list, double click to open it, and change the status to Ready on the edit appointment screen.

If a lab work item is late and the appointment needs to be rebooked, the line can be double-clicked to go to the Edit Appointment window, and the practices normal rebooking procedure can be followed. The list will update to show the new required date for the appointment once it is rebooked.

When following up a lab work item, it might be necessary to add a note to let someone else know what is going on. There is a note button (or right-click option) to add a note to the lab work item. eg. ‘lab has said they are running late but will deliver before 2pm’. Click on the note again to edit it to provide updates.

Reporting

Once the lab work appointment is in the past, the list of appointments with lab items can be printed as a report so that the admin team can cross-check past appointments against any incoming lab bills. This report is available from the lab work tab or from the Reports list on the Administration menu.

Coming soon

A homepage widget showing you a summary of upcoming lab work appointments each time you log in.

Limitations

Only one status per appointment – if an appointment has more than one lab item required, then the appointment should only be put in the Ready state when they are all returned. The details should show the items required, but if it doesn’t, use the notes feature to add any information required.

Only one lab per appointment – in cases where there is more than one lab involved in the appointment, either user two appointments (back to back) or use the notes feature to comment on the second lab and note its state. Only mark the lab work as ready once items from both labs are returned.