Tell doctors and patients when lab results are ready

When you need this

The lab wants the requesting doctor, and if you choose the patient too, told when an order's results are ready, without anyone at the desk phoning round. The message never contains the results: it says they are ready and how to get them. The doctor's email starts switched on. The patient's text and email start off: switch them on once the SMS balance is funded. Only the owner can change these.

The doctor gets an email when every test on the order is authorised. A doctor who signs in to Modial gets a Sign in to view results button that opens that order's results. Any other doctor is asked to call the lab. For a partner hospital's order with no doctor's email, the email goes to the hospital's users who can read results.

The patient's text says, for example: Westgate Medical Lab: your test results (LAB-00123) are ready. Please see Dr T. Moyo, who requested them. Queries: 0242 700 100. When the patient asked for the tests themselves, it says the results are ready for collection instead. Each text is paid for from your SMS balance; emails are free.

Steps

1. Open Settings in the menu. Under Invoices & documents, click Notifications.
2. Under Lab result notices, switch on what the lab wants:
   • Email the doctor when the order's results are ready (on to start with).
   • Text the patient when the order's results are ready.
   • Email the patient as well.
3. Before switching the patient's texts on, look at SMS balance. If it says Your SMS balance is empty, so no texts are sent. Contact support to top it up., top it up first. The line below the balance says how many lab orders were completed in the last 30 days: about one text each.

What you should see

Doctor emails switched on (or Patient texts switched on, Patient emails switched on), and the switch stays on. From then on, when the last test on an order is authorised:

• The doctor's email goes within a minute or two, at any hour.
• The patient's text goes within a minute or two, at any hour, the same as the doctor's email.
• The order's page shows a Notices card: who was told, how, and whether it was sent.

To keep one patient's results for the doctor to give in person, see Keep a patient's results for the doctor to give.

Phone numbers and emails on lab reports

Doctors don't want their own phone and email on a result the patient carries, so lab reports leave out the doctor's and the patient's phone and email. They are still on the records and still used for these notices. To print them, switch on Doctor's phone and email on reports or Patient's phone and email on reports in Preferences.

If something goes wrong

• The switches are greyed out and it says Only the owner can change these.: ask the lab's owner.
• "Couldn't save the setting": the switch goes back to how it was. Try again.
• The doctor wasn't emailed: open the order and look at its Notices card. Not sent: no doctor to tell means the order names no doctor with an email address: add the email to the doctor's record for next time.
• The patient wasn't texted: the Notices card says why, for example Not sent: no phone number or Not sent: held at check-in.
• An email "Lab results text not sent: top up your SMS balance": the balance ran out and a patient's text could not be paid for. The results are still released and the doctor is still emailed; that patient just isn't texted, and is not texted later. Contact support on +263 867 721 1381 or support@modial.co to top up. You get at most one of these emails a day.