What is the accession number and how is it used? Is the number unique to a patient?
The accession number should be a unique number generated by a laboratory to track the patient’s laboratory specimen. The accession number should be entered by laboratories when entering a report in PA-NEDSS. By entering the accession number and patient’s last name, a search can be performed to locate the patient’s record. Since a physician/hospital may not ever see the laboratory specimen number generated by the hospital microbiology laboratory or reference laboratory, many PA-NEDSS organizations have decided to use the patient’s medical record number as a way to link the patient to a unique identifier and to locate the patient’s record.
