Mayo General Hospital has recently launched a paperless results service for GPs that uses the hospital’s laboratory services. This is a significant innovation and provides substantial benefits to patients and GP practices.
Since late 2006, GPs using the laboratory service in Mayo have been able to receive results electronically for laboratory diagnostics using the Healthlink system. These electronic results are available to GPs within a few minutes of being authorised by the medical scientists at the laboratory. Once the results have been reviewed by the GP, it is possible to automatically file the laboratory results with the patient's health record held by the GP. Up until now, a paper report of the same laboratory results was printed and posted to the GP so, as a result of the paperless results services, there is no paper, no printing, no posting, no filing and no shredding needed.
A series of clinical audits were conducted with GPs to assure that the paperless approach was sufficiently robust and reliable for patient care.
Speaking about the development, Regina Rogan, chief scientist/laboratory manager, MGH, explained: “The paperless results service enables the laboratory to concentrate our limited resources on activity that adds value to our users and patients. Over time we expect a substantial reduction in paper handling and a corresponding increase in our ability to provide timely and reliable services to our GP community.”
Tony Canavan, general manager at Mayo General Hospital, added: “Mayo General Hospital is delighted to be the first HSE hospital laboratory to offer a paperless laboratory results service to GPs. For years we have talked about communication between primary and secondary care and its importance in the provision of good patient care. This project is a practical example of this very principle and a demonstration of what can be achieved through joint working between the hospital and the community.”
Mr Canavan continued: “We have learned many lessons from the implementation of this project which we hope to apply across the whole range of communications that need to take place between a patient’s GP and his or her local hospital. We also hope to apply some of this learning to how we communicate patient information within the hospital setting.”
