A good friend was kind enough to alert me of a study headed by Dr. Lawrence P. Casalino of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City that researched how often abnormal test results are reported by doctors to their patients. The study’s findings were well covered nationally, I have taken the liberty to pull excerpts from both The New York Times and the Los Angles Times coverage, seen below. The take home message from the study parallels what has been pounded to death on this blog already (and will continue to be written on in the future). The patient needs to be his or her greatest advocate, follow up on every test you undergo and understand the implications of what your doctor says. So many patient/doctor interactions consist of clueless head nods and a “whatever you think is best doc.” The precise purpose of why this test or why this procedure is lost, the physician’s reasoning goes unchecked.

It no doubt the job of the physician to fully inform the patient on the treatment he or she sees fit and the results of the tests ordered, unfortunately not all doctor’s do their job all the time. The patient needs to be involved in their treatment, make sure they fully comprehend the  physician’s thought process. A little mental energy applied at a doctor’s visit, can eliminate a whole lot of stress later down the road.

The New York Times on unreported abnormal test results:

…scientists reviewed the records of 5,434 patients at 19 independent primary care practices and four based in academic medical centers. They extracted records that contained abnormal results for blood tests or X-rays and other imaging studies, and then searched for documentation that the patient had been properly informed of the problem in a timely way.

Then they surveyed the doctors with uninformed patients. Some told them that the patient had been informed, even though there was no documentation, while others believed the results were not significant and therefore required no notification. In a few cases, the doctor said that the patient had not yet been informed but soon would be. After accounting for these and other ambiguous cases, the researchers found that of 1,889 abnormal results, there were 135 failures to inform.

and the Los Angeles Times take on the study:

The patients had received common blood and screening tests, including mammograms, pap tests, cholesterol tests and red blood cell counts. Almost 35% of the patients had abnormal results that fell well outside the normal range. But in 7.1% of those cases, practices did not inform — or document that they had informed — the patients.

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