Best Practice Guideline

Pathology results are reported in a variety of ways including printed reports, ‘atomic’ result displays from laboratory information systems, rendered reports to General Practitioner (GP) desktop software or My Health Record (MHR), via telephone, via fax, and in electronic medical records. This guideline focuses on MHR reports and rendered GP reports, all of which have headers that appear in an electronic ‘in tray’.

This document sets out best-practice guidelines for the grouping of selected tests on rendered pathology reports, such as those sent to GP desktop software and the MHR. The aim is to standardise the reported results to make it easier for clinicians to locate specific pathology results and readily identify clinically significant results.

Main sections:

· Glossary of terms and acronyms

· Scope

· Guideline development process

· Guiding principles

· Implementation

· Chemical pathology

· Anatomical pathology

· Genetic pathology

· Haematology

· Immunopathology

· Microbiology