Enhancing patient safety with an electronic results checking system in a large HIV outpatient service.

Objective: To establish whether an automated electronic tracker system for reporting blood results would expedite clinician review of abnormal results in HIV-positive outpatients and to pilot the use of this system in routine clinical practice.

Setting: An outpatient service in central London providing specialist HIV-related care to 3900 HIV positive patients.

Design: A comparison of the time taken from sampling to identification and clinician review of abnormal blood results for biochemical tests between the original paper-based checking system and an automated electronic system during a 3-week pilot.