While we do not routinely fax results to GP's, preferring to send results directly to their practice system, we did several years ago investigate this, and found that there were numerous critical points which can degrade the quality of the fax.
1. Just getting your fax to do a copy and looking at the copy is a waste of time.
2. We connected two fax machines together, and from a very good copying machine, could see noticable deterioration on the receiving fax machine, even though it produiced it's own acceptable copies.
3. If you have to go through the hospital switchboard, then again you get a loss of quality, as you do if you find that one of your remoter practices is not on the BT digital network.
4. Crossing from not BT to BT network also loses definition.
Because of this, we agreed locally that for Biochemistry, we do not fax results, but rather worryingly, even though they took part in the exercise, Haematology still do.
Gary Mascall
(Consultant in Clinical Biochemistry)
Clinical Biochemistry
Kidderminster Hospital
Kidderminster
Tel : 01562 823424 extn 53465
-----Original Message-----
From: JG MIDDLE [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 26 March 2003 08:40
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Faxing of results
I am not sure whether participants in this thread have discussed a problem which we at UK NEQAS deal with on a daily basis, ie the appalling quality of some faxes transmitted from clinical laboratories, presumably by poorly maintained, old equipment. (We get blank pages faxed to us too and faxes for other EQA schemes!)
Our error logs are full of examples where 1's are turned into 7's, 3's into 8's and vice versa etc. The risk management / clinical governance issues are obvious.
We have a fax back procedure when we believe results are not absolutely clear. What do the recipients of your faxes do?
Does this worry you? Have you ever looked at the quality of the faxes you transmit?
Scanning of the report and electronic transmission of the image file is probably a better solution - at least you can check the image quality before it is sent!
Perhaps we should have an EQA scheme for 'communication of results'
Just a thought.
J
Jonathan Middle
UK NEQAS Birmingham
tel 0121 414 7300, fax 0121 414 1179
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The opinions expressed are mine alone and do not necessarily represent those of UK NEQAS Birmingham, the UK NEQAS Organisation, the University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust or University of Birmingham.
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