To ask the Minister of Health to detail any steps being taken in Emergency Departments to prevent blood results and other important patient information from being lost.

The Department recognises the importance of ensuring that blood results and other clinically significant patient information are appropriately recorded, reviewed and acted upon within Emergency Departments.

All Health and Social Care (HSC) Trusts have systems and processes in place to support the safe management and tracking of diagnostic results and other key patient information. The implementation of the encompass electronic health and care record, powered by Epic, has strengthened these arrangements by reducing reliance on paper-based processes and providing an electronic and auditable record of investigations, results and other relevant clinical information.

Blood tests and other diagnostic investigations are ordered electronically and results are recorded directly within the patient's electronic health record, where they are available to authorised staff involved in the patient's care. Electronic workflows, including result acknowledgement, tracking and in-basket functions, support clinicians in identifying results requiring review and any necessary follow-up action.

Trusts also have arrangements for the escalation of significant abnormal or critical laboratory results, including direct communication from laboratory services to the relevant clinical team where urgent attention is required. Clinical teams are responsible for reviewing results and taking further action or escalation where clinically indicated.

Where results become available after a patient has left an Emergency Department, electronic workflows support their onward review and follow-up. Individual Trusts have developed local arrangements for this, including shared or pooled electronic in-baskets and senior clinical review of outstanding or abnormal results.

Trusts continue to monitor and review these processes through established clinical governance, incident reporting, audit and quality assurance arrangements. Where an investigation or result is missed or delayed, incidents can be reviewed to identify contributory factors and ensure that learning is incorporated into service improvement or staff training where appropriate.

The Department and HSC Trusts will continue to work to optimise encompass and associated clinical workflows to strengthen the visibility, traceability and timely review of diagnostic results and other clinically important patient information.