A guide to accessing historical reports from pathology providers

Medical practice often requires obtaining historical patient pathology test results, usually when the patient is first seen by a service, or when a patient transfers between providers. This handbook outlines a mechanism for requesting copies of pre-existing reports from pathology providers.

This handbook constrains the use of order messages and standardises terminology in some areas to allow a specific use case to be implemented using the existing Australian and International HL7 V2 standards. It does not introduce any new error message types or trigger events in addition to those already defined in AS 4700.2. It does not replace or modify the existing ordering functionality, which is designed for ordering new tests rather than requesting copies of existing ones.

Main sections:

· Scope

· Introduction

· Selection of order message type

· Requirements of the order message

· Specification of selection criteria in order message

· Example message