Continued Care: Lab Orders and Results

The continued care phase begins after admission and focuses on lab work and lab integrations in the electronic medical records system. This phase plays a critical role in monitoring patient progress, diagnosing conditions, and adjusting treatment plans based on lab results.

Lab integrations streamline the communication between the healthcare facility and third-party labs (e.g., LabCorp, Quest, Millennium, etc.), and facility-owned labs for efficient test ordering, specimen tracking, and result analysis. It also speeds up result delivery, ensures timely treatment adjustments, and helps facilities comply with state and accreditation requirements.

Best Practice Workflows

Follow these steps when entering or updating a lab order or completing a lab requisition:

1. Verify Patient Information

   • Confirm that the patient has an active diagnosis code on their facesheet or in the Manage Diagnosis Code form.

   • Ensure that insurance information is up to date and that the patient has a signed consent for lab testing on their chart.

2. Follow Lab Integration Workflows

   • Important: Refer to Best Practice Lab Order Workflows Based on Lab Integration. Adhere to workflows based on your facility’s lab integration setup.

Best Practice: Access lab reports from the patient’s chart to track the status of their lab orders. Users with access to Kipu Analytics can review positive test percentages and compliance metrics. They can also actively monitor requisition errors, lab orders, and results in the Kipu BI Labs Dashboards to easily identify unsent or errored requisitions, preventing situations where a sample is shipped but not processed in the EMR due to errors.