Unassigned Lab Folder (Tech Tuesday #89)

Happy Tuesday!

It’s time again for Tech Tuesday; a weekly series of helpful hints, tips, and workflows that you can use to improve your skills in Accuro®EMR.

Remember when lab results came on paper? For many of you that was a very long time ago. For just as many, you still get some results on paper. Electronic Lab Results delivery is commonplace these days as it is a fast and reliable delivery service.

The way Accuro receives labs is actually very similar to the way email works (except more secure). When you start up Accuro, it creates a secure connection to the lab servers and checks your clinic’s "inbox". If there is anything there, it downloads them. Once downloaded, Accuro reads through the lab message to determine whose inbox to put the lab in to. This determination can be confusing, and many people receive far more results than they perhaps need to. If you are the ordering physician or on the carbon copy, you get the result in your inbox.

Some labs are not addressed to any one individual, but rather addressed to the clinic. In these cases, Accuro has no single inbox to put the lab in to. What it does with this is put the lab in to a folder in your home section under labs called "Unassigned".

It is very important to have someone in your clinic check the Unassigned inbox regularly.

Sometimes you will see labs in there that are either addressed the clinic, or attempting to be addressed to a physician but the wrong number or misspelling causes it to land in the unassigned folder.

If you do see a lab in the unassigned lab folder, you can send it to the appropriate physician folder.

Steps to Assign a Lab from the Unassigned Lab Folder

1. Locate the Lab in the Home section, Labs Folder, Unassigned Folder.
2. Left click on the lab to highlight it.
3. Click the "Assign Provider" button.
4. Select the Provider from the dropdown list that you want to send the lab to
5. Now choose whether you want to forward the lab or assign it.
   1. Forwarding the lab sends a copy to the Provider but leaves it in the current folder
   2. Assigning the lab sends it to the Provider and removes it from the current folder
6. Click Ok

Note that you can forward and assign labs from any lab folder, not just unassigned. If you find labs sitting in the folder that look like they have one of your physician’s names on it and think it should be going directly to their inbox as opposed to the unassigned folder, it may be that the Lab ID number is not set up properly on the Provider in Accuro. Best to call Accuro support if this is the case and they can help you out.

Hope you found this helpful! Stay tuned for next week’s Tech Tuesday!

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