An Automated Clinical Laboratory Decision Support System for Test Utilization, Medical Necessity Verification and Payment Processing.

Physicians could improve the efficiency of the healthcare system if a reliable resource were available to aid them in better understanding, selecting, and interpreting the diagnostic laboratory tests. It has been well established and widely recognized that (a) laboratory testing provides 70-85% of the objective data that physicians use in diagnosis and treatment of their patients, (b) orders for laboratory tests in the U.S.

Classifying laboratory incident reports to identify problems that jeopardize patient safety.

We developed a laboratory incident report classification system that can guide reduction of actual and potential adverse events. The system was applied retrospectively to 129 incident reports occurring during a 16-month period. Incidents were classified by type of adverse event (actual or potential), specific and potential patient impact, nature of laboratory involvement, testing phase, and preventability.