Table 2.

Mean time (minutes) between patient’s presentation in the accident and emergency department, time until blood sample taken, and time until attending doctor’s awareness of result of blood test for patients whose samples were allocated to point of care testing or to testing by the hospital’s central laboratory

	Point of care testing			Laboratory testing			Point of care v laboratory testing
	No of patients	Mean time (95% CI)		No of patients	Mean time (95% CI)		Difference between means (95% CI)	P value
Time until blood sampling	860*	65 (62 to 69)		868†	66 (63 to 69)		1 (−4 to 6)	0.78
Time until doctor aware of result of arterial blood gas measurement‡	43	62 (48 to 91)		43	82 (65 to 100)		21 (−3 to 44)	0.09
Time until doctor aware of result of haematological test	815	80 (76 to 83)		748	154 (150 to 159)		74 (68 to 80)	<0.0001
Time until doctor aware of result of biochemical test	815	80 (76 to 83)		765	165 (160 to 170)		86 (80 to 92)	<0.0001

^*Information is missing for one point of care patient who discharged himself before blood test results were available.  

^†Haematology and biochemistry results were not retrieved for all patients allocated to laboratory testing.  

^‡ One point of care outlier, with a time to awareness of test result more than five times greater than the mean, was excluded from this comparison.