No more critical calls after hours for outpatient microbiology results

Change starts July 2

Salem Health Laboratories is changing their critical lab value notification process.

Starting Wednesday, July 2, they will call critical microbiology laboratory results for outpatients only during business hours. They will discontinue calling or paging providers after hours. 

Tests affected:

• Positive blood cultures
  • For discharged Emergency Department (ED) patients, positive blood cultures will continue to be called to the ED directly and will not be routed to the Primary Care Provider (PCP).
• CSF gram stains and/or cultures
• AFB Stain or culture
• C. difficile
• Body fluid or normally sterile site gram stains, including surgical cultures

Summary of changes:

• New practice: All microbiology critical values will be called during business hours. No phone calls or pages will be made after hours and on-call pathologists will not be paged.
• Current practice: If lab staff are unable to reach a Licensed Independent Practitioner or Registered Nurse within 90 minutes, they will contact a pathologist or the pathologist on call. Exception: For AFB, C. diff and MRSA, the values are called the next business day.

A list of microbiology critical values can be found in the Test Directory.