Postdischarge Results
Of the 2644 patients discharged from the hospitalist
services during the study period, 1095 (41%) had a total of 2033 test results pending on the day of discharge, and 877 of these results (43%) were abnormal (Figure 2). Of these 877 abnormal results, we excluded 206 because they were near-normal or stable compared with previous values. A physician reviewed the remaining 671 results (33% of the pending results), and 191 results (9.4% of the pending results [95% CI, 8.0% to 11.0%]) from 177 patients were considered potentially actionable on the basis of review of
the discharge orders and summary. For these 191 results, we sent 155 surveys. In 31 cases, we could not identify the primary care physician, and in 5 cases, multiple results for the same patient were combined in 1 survey e-mail