eOrders

Over the past few months Pathlab have been installing computers at our collection rooms in the Eastern and Western Bay of Plenty.

We would like to acknowledge and thank those practices who have been involved in the early stage of the eOrders roll out, assisting with sending some patients to our collection rooms without request forms. This has enabled our Patient Services teams to be eased into a new process and allowed us to iron out any unforeseen issues that may arise when introducing such a change that impacts the GP practice, the patient, and Pathlab.

We are now at a point whereby we can offer this process to all practices in the region where a user is placing the lab order using Pathlab eOrders.

Effective Monday May 17th all providers who are currently using Pathlab eOrdering to place lab orders will be able to send their patients to any of our Pathlab collection rooms in the Eastern and Western Bay, without a requestform.

Please note the following:

• All specimens sent to the lab from the practice will still require a request form.
• You will still be able to print forms for patients who require sample collection instructions, or for patients you know will require a form to remind them to have their samples collected for testing.
• Patients for repeat testing (INR’s etc) will require their lab order to be placed using the Repeat Request field in eOrders and notnoted in the clinical details. Any repeat requests noted in the clinical details will only allow the form to be used as a one-off request and another form will be required from the provider.
• Emailed forms: as long as you are using Pathlab eOrders, you will no longer be required to email forms for patients who you have seen remotely. The only exception to the rule is for those patients who will require an appointment e.g Covid-19 requests, etc.
• Patients will be required to quote their details at the collection room reception, and some form of identification may be asked for if there is a communication difficulty.

Please be aware however that with technology comes some pitfalls. On the rare occasion one of our collection room loses connectivity to our network and/or power, the collection room will be closed to those patients who do not have a paper-based form due to the forms not being accessible online.