BLOOD TESTING AT CRAWLEY DOWN HEALTH CENTRE Generally speaking there are three situations where this can occur: (A) - when requested by hospitals When patients attend local hospitals and follow up blood tests are requested, historically the patient has had 2 options; 1) Attend the hospitals blood taking department. 2) Attend the health centre. If the patient uses option 2 our admin staff would forward on the result, once received, to the relevant department but this has several flaws. Firstly, the large volume of these requests which we now receive, involves very significant processing time for our staff in forwarding the results making the task no longer sustainable. Secondly there is no guarantee the result gets to the right set of notes/department/consultant (we know it often doesn’t). If it does it will only be a paper copy which makes it harder to view trends/changes in results. However, this is not a problem when the bloods are taken by the hospital as they will be on their IT system which allows for easy review/monitoring. For these reasons option 1 is ultimately better for patient care- and as a result we STRONGLY recommend that if a Hospital requests bloods from a patient they should have them taken at the hospitals blood taking department. We realise there may be some inconvenience re travel BUT it is in the patients BEST interest. If a patient insists on Option 2 then we have decided that the best result for them will be achieved if they take on the responsibility of collecting the result (which will include a copying charge of 50p) and make their own arrangements to forward that result onto their consultant and/or hospital. We realise that some hospitals may be further away BUT, generally tests are requested during clinic appointments and it may just mean hanging on a bit longer to get them done. If tests are requested by Private Hospitals then these should always be done by those hospitals - the consultants are aware of this and shouldn't ask for them to be performed at the Health Centre. (B) - where we at the Health Centre request them. For bloods requested by ourselves patients can request copies of results but will be charged a copying fee as above. (C) - where patients have their bloods checked regularly at the Health centre as part of a "shared care" service with the local hospitals. This will continue to happen BUT results will not be forwarded onto the hospitals -INSTEAD results will be recorded onto a patient held record which will be updated (by the Nurse) every time they attend for the next blood test. This record can then be shown to their consultant at subsequent visits but importantly will have the added advantage of a patient held record which could be shown to other health care agencies if ever required. Patients can still request full copies of their results but will be charged a copying fee.