Figure 1.

Example of an automated email notification received by intervention physicians. A typical radiology/pathology email generated by the system. There were three notification types: one for chemistry/hematology, radiology/pathology, and microbiology results. In this example, there were no pending radiology results at discharge; therefore, only pathology results were detected and reported by the system. This patient may have had other types of tests pending at discharge (TPADs) (eg, microbiology or chemistry/hematology), which would have triggered separate emails to the responsible physicians. All emails included standard information (eg, subject heading, patient name, medical record number, discharge date, contact information for the inpatient attending physician and primary care physician (PCP)), and results of TPADs. Non-network PCPs did not receive emails, but their contact information was included in emails sent to inpatient attending physician physicians. Therefore, the discharging attending physician could contact non-network PCPs after reviewing TPAD results.