In short

A result is routine or critical depending on what is in it

AI lab result routing reads each inbound laboratory and imaging report, matches it to the patient and ordering provider, and scores its urgency on the values and findings inside the report rather than on the document type. Critical values escalate immediately along a defined path; routine results are routed for normal review.

The problem

Why result handling fails

Not through negligence. Through volume, and through everything looking identical on arrival.

Critical values look ordinary

A critical potassium arrives in the same format, from the same lab, in the same stack as forty normal panels.

Incidental findings

An imaging report ordered for one thing reports something else entirely, three paragraphs down.

The ordering provider is out

A result comes back while the clinician who ordered it is off. Without a covering rule it waits.

Acknowledgement is assumed

A result was delivered to a chart. Whether anybody actually read it is a different question, and usually an unanswered one.

Amended results

A corrected result supersedes one already reviewed and filed, and the correction gets the same routine handling.

Volume masks urgency

Two hundred results a day means the critical one gets the same seconds of attention as the rest.

Method

How results are handled

Four stages. The urgency decision happens at stage three, not when a person opens it.

01

Read and match

Patient, ordering provider, specimen and test type identified. Amended results linked to the original.

02

Extract values

Numeric values, reference ranges, flags and narrative findings pulled into structured fields.

03

Score

Urgency determined from the values and findings themselves, against thresholds configured for your practice.

04

Escalate or route

Critical findings escalate immediately along a defined path. Everything else routes for normal review, tracked to acknowledgement.

Questions

Common questions

How does AI decide a lab result is critical?

From the values and findings inside the report, checked against thresholds configured for your practice, rather than from the document type. A result is critical because of what it says, not because of what kind of document it is.

Who sets the critical thresholds?

You do, with clinical sign-off, before go-live. Thresholds vary by specialty and patient population, so Aurus does not ship generic clinical values.

What happens if the ordering provider is unavailable?

The escalation path defines a covering route. A critical result does not wait for one named person to return.

Does it handle amended or corrected results?

Yes. An amended result is linked to the original and flagged as a correction rather than routed as a fresh routine result.

Does it track whether a result was actually read?

Yes. Routing to a chart is delivery, not acknowledgement. Provenza tracks the item until someone acknowledges and closes it.

Related

Keep reading

Criticality scoring

How urgency is determined from document contents.

Response SLAs

What happens once a result is scored.

AI fax triage

The pipeline results arrive through.

How would you prove every critical result was seen?

Send a week of results. We will show you which would have escalated and how fast.

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