Effective Monday, July 1, 2013, the Microbiology Department will be performing critical alert value (CAV) notification calls of positive cultures in a manner consistent with all other critical alert value notification as indicated in our Clinical Laboratory Services Critical Values (Result) policy:

Inpatient CAV notifications calls will be made to the patient's nursing healthcare team member. Outpatient CAV notification calls will be made to the attending physician's office. All notification calls with applicable readback verification will be documented in Meditech.

Previously, the Microbiology Department had followed a long established standard of practice of due diligence with secondary notification calls to physicians to ensure receipt of these CAV positive blood culture results.

With the current challenging workload demands on all healthcare team members and following the recommendations from medical staff, Microbiology has updated the department's CAV positive blood cultures policy to allow for a more efficient and consistent notification process when reporting these results.

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