The post-examination phase includes all the processes after test analysis. Recently, significant attention has been focused on errors made during the post-examination phase of laboratory testing and the impact errors made during this phase have on laboratory-related patient outcomes. Similar to the pre-examination phase, the post-examination phase can be divided into those procedures that are within the laboratory and outside the laboratory.
The examples listed below are limited to possible post-examination errors that may occur within the laboratory and over which the laboratory has more control:
- Laboratory results not verified before being reported
- Improper data entry or typing mistakes causing erroneous information to be reported
- Critical values not reported or not reported in a timely manner
- Laboratory tests not reported or reported to the wrong health provider (for example, poor communication to a patient's physician of the results of laboratory tests that are pending at the time of a patient's discharge)
- Lack of timeliness of reporting laboratory results (slow turnaround time)
- Misinterpretation of an alphabetic flag in the result field (i.e. lower case "l" interpreted as the number "1"
- Oral results misunderstood by receiving party--no "read back" requested to confirm that data was correctly received
