Test Results

Results will be issued in person or over the telephone only after 14:00. We would ask that you allow one week before contacting the practice. Please note that some results may take longer. 

In order to maintain confidentiality test results and hospital reports will only be given to patients themselves, or to parents of minors if appropriate.

Please also be aware that the practice is not in a position to give results of tests arranged by the hospital, and hospital clinics should be contacted directly for these results.

Urine samples should only be handed into the practice if the sample has been requested by a clinician.

Please follow the flowchart below for further information regarding urine samples.

Any urine sample not requested by a clinician will not be tested

HOSPITAL REQUESTED TEST RESULTS

 If you are seen in the hospital as an inpatient, at an outpatient clinic or at A&E, you may have some tests, the results of which you will not get immediately. Understandably, patients often contact their GP practice, to try to get hold of these results.

However,  we would not usually receive these. When a test is carried out, the result is returned to the doctor who requested the test. This means that when a hospital doctor orders a test, the result will go to them and only to them, and we may only find out about that result if they write to us.

Therefore, we do not chase hospital tests for three main reasons:

We often have no idea why a test was requested, nor what question the hospital doctor was trying to answer when they requested it, nor in more specialist cases, what should be done with a particular result.

Administratively, we are not informed when a hospital doctor requests tests, and therefore do not know they exist to chase; from a workload perspective, we are not funded or resourced to chase up tests ordered by hospitals.

The BMA (British Medical Association) agree that the “duty of care” in chasing test results rests with the person requesting the test, i.e. that if a doctor asks for a test they need to chase up and act on the result themselves.

For these reasons, please contact the hospital and ask for the secretary of the doctor who saw you. They can obtain the results, or let you know when and how you will receive them. Please try not to take up our receptionists’ time asking us to do this, as it is the hospital’s responsibility.

We are of course very happy to discuss your results with hospital doctors should they wish.