Curaeon Help Centre / KB-107
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KB-107Clinical softwareHow-to
Draft. This article is awaiting technical review and may change — if anything here conflicts with advice from our team, follow the team.

Order a test, add copy-to recipients, and chase a result that never came back on the Requests screen

Order pathology or imaging so that a specialist gets the result too, and use the Requests screen to find the test that was ordered, never returned, and would otherwise be forgotten.

Before you start

Requests are ordered from the consult or the patient record; the Requests worklist sits beside the Lab feed under Investigations in the sidebar. Ordering is clinical work. Working the list — ringing a laboratory about a result that has not arrived — is something reception or a nurse can do from the same screen.

Order a test

  1. From the consult or the record, start a request and choose the tests.
  2. Add copy-to recipients if a specialist should receive the result as well as you.
  3. Print the form, or send it to the provider where the provider is connected.

The request now counts as outstanding until its result arrives or somebody closes it.

What happens when the result arrives

Electronic results arrive automatically where a laboratory is connected and are matched to the patient by their identifiers, name and date of birth. A matched result goes to the Inbox for review and shows against the request as a result back; one that could not be matched confidently waits in the Lab feed to be assigned by hand (KB-019 — Pathology results not filing — what to check). Matching is deliberately cautious — filing to the wrong patient is worse than waiting. A result addressed to somebody else and copied to you is marked COPY and is for information (KB-046 — Work the results Inbox: Practitioner vs Assigned to, routing, COPY and corrected results, Follow-up).

Work the Requests screen

  1. Open Investigations → Requests. It lists the requests that have gone out and are not back yet.
  2. Start on Overdue. The screen says why: it is the one lane that can hide a missed result. All outstanding shows everything still open.
  3. Search by patient, test or request number, or narrow to one requesting practitioner — a doctor chasing their own orders, or reception working one doctor's list.
  4. Select a request. The detail pane shows when it was requested, by whom, when the result was expected and how many results have come back, and offers Print request form, Open results, Mark done and Cancel request.
  5. Ring the laboratory or imaging provider with the request number. When the result turns out to have been sent to another practice, or the patient never attended, close the request with Mark done or Cancel request so it stops being counted.
The Requests screen: what it lists, the Overdue and All outstanding views with their counts, the search by patient, test or request number, the requesting-practitioner filter and + New request.
The Requests screen: what it lists, the Overdue and All outstanding views with their counts, the search by patient, test or request number, the requesting-practitioner filter and + New request.

The safety net behind it

Requests catches the test that never came back. Follow-up catches the other failure — a result that arrived, was filed and was never actioned — and is the commonest serious failure in general practice (KB-046 — Work the results Inbox: Practitioner vs Assigned to, routing, COPY and corrected results, Follow-up). The two screens together are how a practice can say every test it ordered was either returned and read, or knowingly closed.

What the list leaves out

For anyone not named on a restricted record, that patient's requests are left out and the screen says how many, so the list never looks finished when it is not (KB-061 — Restrict a patient's record, and open one in an emergency). Opening a request from the list is opening the patient's record, and may ask your reason first (KB-062 — Why Curaeon asks your reason for opening a record).

If that didn't work

A result is on the patient but the request still shows as outstanding. The result may have arrived on paper and been scanned rather than matched electronically. Open the request, confirm with Open results, and close it with Mark done.

The laboratory says they sent it. Look in the Lab feed for an unmatched message before asking them to resend (KB-019 — Pathology results not filing — what to check).

Still stuck? Raise a ticket at support.curaeon.com.au or call 1300 XXX XXX. If your clinic can't see patients right now, call and choose option 1. Support is staffed Monday to Friday, 8:00–18:00 Sydney time; outside those hours a call or text to the same number is answered on a best-effort basis.