Obtaining copies of test results from specialists
Quite often a GP practice will not have electronic or paper copies of patient’s investigations where the patient is under the care of a specialist. A typical example is a GP not getting the HBA1C pathology results for a patient under the care of an Endocrinologist.
This results in a distortion of a GP’s HBA1C record – those patients are tagged as “Nothing recorded” under a HBA1C graph (such as the PEN Clinical Audit Tool).
A simple fix is to add the following line to the standard specialist referral letter:
Please note: we require to be Carbon Copied (CC’ed) on any pathology/radiology results and would appreciate your co-operation in this matter as it helps us to maintain accurate clinical records. Our preference is for electronic copies of the results.
Part 2: recording HbA1c results
Question: I get my HBA1c results from the endocrinologist in paper format – how do I correctly record these in MD.
Answer: If you record them under the Investigations tab as a New item they will not be picked as having been recorded by programs such as PEN Clinical Audit Tool or Doctors Control Panel. You need to go to the Clinical menu, select Diabetes Record… and click on the Add Values button. Type in the HbA1c result in the appropriate box.
