Availability of results

For in-house tests, the Blood Sciences Department aims to provide results in a timely manner.

Turn-around-times

For in-house tests, the Blood Sciences Department aims to provide results within the following times dependent on location:

inpatients - under 2 hours
outpatients - under 2 hours
GP - under 3 hours
Accident and Emergency* - under one hour

Our target for all these results is to turn-around a minimum of 90% of in-house tests by these timeframes.

The times stated are measured from receipt of the sample in the laboratory reception, to the availability of the electronic report. The department’s performance against these target times is regularly audited to ensure these times are achieved.

The TATs stated above are achievable for requests received between Monday and Friday; for those tests where analysis is not performed at weekends, or out-of-hours.

*All requests from Accident and Emergency are processed as ‘stat’ requests.

Please note - TATs for referral tests are available on the Blood Sciences test repertoire page.

Access to results

All results are transferred to the Sunquest ICE system following authorisation by the Blood Sciences Department, and can be accessed by clinical staff within the hospital.

Types of results

Inpatients

Results for certain departments are sent directly to the department. The frequencies of results being sent over, are agreed with individual departments. For example, this could be every 30 minutes or only at other specified times.

Results for GPs

In addition to GPs being able to view results from the Sunquest ICE system, results are also emailed hourly. GP surgeries can then download them into the host GP system.

Where requested, outpatient reports are printed the following working day and dispatched at the end of that day.

Critical results

Results which exceed the predefined ‘critical limits’ of the Blood Sciences Department are telephoned directly to the requesting location.