Best Practices for Communicating Test Results

Via one widely quoted Archives of Internal Medicine study:

To our knowledge, no guidelines exist to delineate the processes that practices should use to manage test results. Based on our review of the literature and a pilot study that we conducted, we defined "good processes" for managing test results as the following: (1) all results are routed to the responsible physician; (2) the physician signs off on all results; (3) the practice informs patients of all results, normal and abnormal, at least in general terms; (4) the practice documents that the patient has been informed; and (5) patients are told to call after a certain time interval if they have not been notified of their results.