Veracity Lab and Results Calls

The worry behind a status question

A patient calls to ask whether their blood work is back. Underneath the question there is often something else: they are anxious, they saw a value flagged in a portal, they were told someone would call and nobody has. Treating every one of these calls as a status check misses the patient who needs a clinician, and treating every one as urgent buries the nurse line.

Results calls also come from other directions: a specialist's office asking for a copy of recent labs, a hospital asking what was drawn before an admission, a family member trying to help a parent understand a letter. Each needs a different owner, and the summary says which kind of caller it was.

What Katie will and will not say about results

Katie does not read, interpret or relay results. She never tells a patient that a number is normal, high or nothing to worry about, and she does not look up results. Results are communicated by your clinicians, under your practice's policies.

What she does is take the call immediately, so the worried patient is not left on hold, and capture the details your staff need to respond.

Details gathered on each results call

The summary gives your clinical team the context to prioritize callbacks without listening to a message first.

• Which test the patient had and roughly when
• Where it was done: your office, a hospital lab or an outside lab
• Which provider ordered it
• Whether the patient has already seen something in a portal that concerned them
• Any new or worsening symptoms, which follow your escalation rules

Routine status checks versus time-sensitive calls

Your practice sets the escalation rules, and they matter most here. A patient asking whether a routine cholesterol panel is back can wait for the next results callback. A patient who says they were told to call about an abnormal result, or who mentions new symptoms, follows the path you define to clinical staff. Katie applies the rule; she does not judge the result.

Outside labs and imaging centers sometimes phone in critical values. Your rules can send those calls to clinical staff during office hours, and your after-hours rules decide what happens while you are closed.

Closing the loop in Veracity

Your clinical staff review the result in Veracity and contact the patient. The structured summary tells them who called, about which test and how urgent the caller's concern is, so the callback starts with context. When a patient calls more than once, each call has its own summary, which makes it plain that the patient is still waiting.

Over time, the volume of status calls tells you something too. If many patients call to ask whether results are back, a clearer explanation at the visit about how and when results are shared may save everyone a phone call.