Pain in Neck: Immediate Medical Lab Results

Fed law makes labs immediately give you test results, often causing confusion or fear. Well-intentioned, doesn’t this mandated distribution of electronic records directly without filtering by the treating doctor have to change?

As the WSJ noted: “This wasn’t the way Laurette Bennhold-Samaan wanted to learn she had breast cancer: logging onto her medical portal to see the words ‘invasive ductal carcinoma.’ Stunned, the 62-yr-old from Arlington, Va., called her doctor. ‘I’m sorry you’re giving me the information I should be giving you,’ she recalls her doctor saying. [Fact is,] people are now often getting medical information directly” thanks to a “provision in legislation mandating that patients receive health information without delay.” Of course, the intent of the 2021 law (21stCentury Cures Act) may have been good in today’s hi-tech world, “but in practice, raw test results can spark confusion at best & panic at worst. Sometimes patients misinterpret harmless information. Other times, people receive bad news without an explanation that could cushion the blow.” Said Dr. David Gerber, a Dallas oncologist: “There is tremendous potential for harm with the release of some types of tests to patients without providing some type of clinical context.”

No kidding. I, for instance, recently got a lab results report about a suspected hernia in “doctor-ese” & I’ll be damned if I could make heads or tails of what it really meant. It “seemed” to confirm there was some kind of problem, but not a hint as to how serious it might be or whether surgery was needed. Of course, it was the doctor’s job to interpret the lab results & explain it all to me, but for 48 hours I was left wondering. So, since the mandated immediate notice did nothing but worry me, the question is, “why send it”? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the law to mandate “immediate notice & explanation” to a patient by the treating doctor, i.e., the one who ordered the test?

Davd Soul