How are electronic results sorted and filed in the GP practice? How is a permanent record created?
Pathology report messages arriving at a GP Practice will carry information identifying a recipient of the message (usually a GP). This enables messages to be sorted on a recipient basis, if required, and made available in an “in-tray” ready for viewing. The messages also carry information identifying a patient. In most cases this information should be adequate to identify the patient uniquely. Where this is not possible, GP systems provide functionality to enable the patient information in the message to be matched to a patient on the GP practice database. Being matched to a patient is a pre-requisite to being able to file the data against a patient’s medical record. The information content from a message can be viewed from the “in-tray”. When the content has been viewed, it can be filed into the patient’s medical record. This filing consequently incorporates the pathology report data into the patient’s permanent electronic medical record, and is subject to the same permanency requirem
