Meeting regulatory requirements by the use of cell phone text message notification with autoescalation and loop closure for reporting of critical laboratory results.

Critical laboratory results require timely and accurate transmission to the appropriate caregiver to provide intervention to prevent an adverse outcome. We report the use of text messages to notify critical laboratory results in a large teaching hospital to manage the documentation and audit requirements of critical result reporting by regulatory agencies. The text messaging system (critical reportable result health care messaging system [CRR-HMS]) allows a receiver to acknowledge or reject a critical result by short message service reply. Failure to obtain a confirmatory receipt within 10 minutes produces an automated escalation to an alternative physician according to a roster. The median time required for physician response decreased from 7.3 minutes to 2 minutes after implementation of the CRR-HMS. The CRR-HMS is a clinically useful tool to rapidly communicate critical results to targeted physicians to facilitate rapid and timely intervention. This feature seems to be an important laboratory process mediator, and recent Joint Commission reviews have placed this as a requirement.