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Specimen Collection Information
Specimen Pick-up
In general, most specimens on Hong
Kong Island and Kowloon will be picked
up by our messengers on the same day if notified before 4.30 pm. Request
for specimen pick up after 4.30 pm will be collected the next working day.
Special arrangements can be made for URGENT cases, fresh specimens and
frozen section specimens.
Specimen Containers and Labeling
It is essential to label the specimens with three
patient identifiers (e.g. name and ID/passport, clinic number, date of
birth) on the form and two patient identifiers on specimen containers. Small
specimen containers with 10% buffered formalin are available on request.
Specimen reception
In compliance with
NATA General Accreditation Criteria (ISO 15189 Standard Application Document)
,
issued in May, 2019, samples that are received unlabelled, mislabelled or
insufficiently labelled must not be relabelled after receipt or sent back to
the collector for relabelling. The exception is for irreplaceable specimens
(e.g. histology specimens). In such cases the original specimen label must
remain unaltered and visible. However an additional label may be added to
the container to aid traceability through the laboratory. The person
applying the additional label must be identifiable in the records and the
original labelling issue must be included as a comment in the final test
report.
We define Pap smear,
urine, sputum and FNA as replaceable specimens and biopsies as irreplaceable
specimens. In cases where 2 unlabelled bottles from 2 patients with
replaceable specimens are received at the same time from the same clinic,
the clinic will be informed by phone accordingly but the 2 unlabelled
bottles will not be processed or returned. 2 new and properly labelled
bottles with re-take of specimens will have to be re-submitted for
laboratory examination.
Confidentiality
Confidentiality of patient information is of upmost
importance to us. All request for faxing will only be faxed to numbers
stored in our database. All fax reports are recorded in our fax report log
book. Verbal reports over the phone will only be given out by our
pathologists to the referring doctor. We may ring you back to confirm the
identity of the caller in some instances. Copies of reports to another
doctor will only be sent if it is written on the request form. Reports will
not be given to patient directly. These arrangements may cause some
inconvenience to our referring doctors but please bear with us as we have
to preserve confidentiality of patient information at all times.
Urgent Results - to be
telephoned or faxed
Should you require a result to be reported urgently,
please indicate this on the request form and telephone our laboratory to
ensure immediate attention. If you wish to be contacted after hours, please
ensure that your after hours contact number is clearly written on the
request form.
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