Push notifications for critical labs results: a pilot study in the intensive care unit (ICU)

We developed a push notification allowing for an electronic acknowledgment of critical lab results to providers in the intensive care unit.

This project was conducted over a 3-month period at a large academic safety net hospital. A push notification and acknowledgment system were created to comply with the existing critical results notification requirements. We monitored the number of acknowledged results, time to acknowledgment, and lab type.

Prior to the push notification, lab services paged the provider. This resulted in many critical lab results relayed to the clinician beyond the expected 10-minute window. With the push notification workflow, we found that, during the 3-month period, 82, or 5.8%, of the 1414 results were acknowledged. This represented 82 less pages/calls lab services had to make.

The push notification alert was easy to use and there was quicker results notification when acknowledged. There were limitations due to hand-offs for clinicians and some were not familiar with the mobile technology and the electronic acknowledgment.

Although the acknowledgment rate was low, every electronic acknowledgment saved lab service technicians an average of 10 minutes compared to the existing workflow. As familiarity with the technology and workflow increases, this novel form of communication has the potential to have significant cost savings for lab services, in addition to efficiency gains for lab, clinicians, and more timely care. The integration of health information technology and push notification of critical labs should be the focus of investigation for further future research.