National survey on current situation of critical value reporting in 973 laboratories in China

The aim of the study was to investigate the state-of-the-art of the performance of critical value reporting and provide recommendations for laboratories setting critical value reporting time frames.

The National Centre for Clinical Laboratories in China initiated a critical value reporting investigation in 2015. A questionnaire related to critical value reporting policy was sent to 1589 clinical laboratories in China online. The questionnaire consisted of a set of questions related to critical value reporting policy and a set of questions related to timeliness of critical value reporting. The survey data were collected between March and April 2015.

A total survey response rate was 61.2%. The critical value unreported rate, unreported timely rate, and clinical unacknowledged rate of more than half of participants were all 0.0%. More than 75.0% of participants could report half of critical values to clinicians within 20 minutes and could report 90.0% of critical values to clinicians within 25 minutes (from result validation to result communication to the clinician). The median of target critical value reporting time was 15 minutes. "Reporting omission caused by laboratory staff", "communications equipment failure to connect", and "uncompleted application form without contact information of clinician" were the three major reasons for unreported critical value.

The majority of laboratories can report critical values to responsible clinical staff within 25 minutes. Thus, this value could be recommended as suitable critical value reporting time frame for biochemistry laboratories in China. However, careful monitoring of the complete reporting process and improvement of information systems should ensure further improvement of critical value reporting timeliness.