I would have thought the path company and the gp is likely to get sued first as cojoint responsibility for a break in the communicating of important results. The path company could then get out of responsibility if they can prove that they contacted the gp directly (spoke to the gp) if it was an urgently critical result. Don't think sending an urgent fax to an unmanned clinic would be good enough. Sometimes the path company will deem a result semi-urgent, like grossly abnormal liver function results that aren't likely to indicate complete liver failure, merely obstructive jaundice, or hepatitis, and just fax it, or send it the next day, have had that experience. Apparently they have a manual to say which abnormal results need direct communication. With non-urgent results, if the path company can just prove they sent it through normal channels, usually mail and electronic together, the onus would be on the gp to chase up unarrived results . It helps to ask the patient to do the chasing, by ringing up for the results, or making an appointment to discuss the results, but if they don't do it, and the result is critical and it is missed, the courts would probably not favour the gp. What do the MDOs say ?
On Thu, 2007-03-08 at 16:17 +1100, Chris Scott wrote: > What is the 'lists' understanding of whose legal responsibility it is > to monitor the receipt of inbound messages (Path, DI, DS etc) into > Practice software from download applications? > > It appears that generally download applications will normally notify > the sender of receipt. The GP clinical software may or may not be set > up or capable to pass acknowledgement back through the system to the > sender. > > Chris. > > Chris Scott > > Chief Information Officer > > Hunter Urban Division of General Practice > > Tel: 02 4925 2259 > > Mobile: 0413 945 564 > > Help Desk: 02 4929 1000 > > http://www.hudgp.org.au > > > > > > NOTICE - This message (including any attached files) is intended only for the > use of the addressee named above and may contain privileged and confidential > information. > > If you are not the intended recipient of this message you must not > disseminate, copy or take any action based upon it. If you received this > message in error please notify the Hunter Urban Division of General Practice > immediately (+61 2 4925 2259). > > Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, > except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of the > Hunter Urban Division of General Practice. > > > _______________________________________________ > Gpcg_talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
