Managing Held Orders

When an order is placed on hold, the order is kept in a hold list until it is filed or deleted, or until it is purged from the system automatically. (An administrator determines the number of days that held orders are retained in the hold list.)

For example, if you put the order on hold because the specimen had not yet been collected, once it is collected you can retrieve the order from the hold list, add the collection information, and then file it. You can also retrieve an order from the hold list, make changes to it (such as adding or removing tests), and put the order back on hold for completion later. If you or the patient decides not to have the test performed, you can delete the order from the hold list. You can also simply view a list of the tests associated with an order on the hold list, as well as print the hold list or export it to an Excel spreadsheet.

There are several ways to access a held order:

You can view the hold list for all of the patients at all of your assigned clients for your current lab.

You can view the hold list for a specific patient, client, or date range.

You can view all of the pending orders for a specific patient using the Order Entry page.

Even when viewing the hold list, you can search for any text, which can help you locate orders associated with a particular requisition number, physician, date, or other data.

Notes:  

With the hold list, you can retrieve up to 250 held orders at once.

For generic orders, the hold list displays the generic client ID in parentheses below the eLabs client number, and the generic lab name below the requisition number. If you do not want to include generic orders in the hold list or on the Patient Search - Advanced Results dialog box, clear the Include Generic (Held, Scheduled, Standing) check box in your user profile. (Generic orders never appear in the Patient’s Pending Orders section of the streamlined Order Entry page. That page does not support generic orders)

For orders that were added to the hold list because the original order was manually split or transferred from the requisition log by a Quest Diagnostics or contracted phlebotomist, the hold list displays the requisition number associated with the original order. For split orders, the date that the order was split also appears. (This information appears below the requisition number of the held order.)

If a held order was processed by another lab (for example, if the patient went to a Quest Diagnostics PSC while traveling), that order does not appear in the hold list or the Patient Search - Advanced Results dialog box for the original lab. However, it does appear in the requisition log.

If you try to open a held order placed with Athena Diagnostics (ZBD), and you did not previously agree to the financial terms for those orders, you might be prompted to do so. Click Accept if you agree to these terms; you will not be prompted again. Otherwise, click Decline, and then click Continue on the next message. If you decline the terms, you will not be able to file or edit that order.

If you accept the terms, and subsequently decide not to accept them, contact the Help Desk to have ordering for Athena Diagnostics disabled for you.

When you open a held order, if the specified collection date is not today’s date, the date and time (if any) are automatically removed from the order. Unless your user profile is configured to automatically use today’s date as the collection date, you must specify the date before you can file the order. (This applies only if you open the order using the legacy Order Entry page. If you use the streamlined Order Entry page, any existing date and time are retained.)

When you open a held order containing invalid order codes, a message appears at the top of the Order Entry page listing the invalid codes. Any invalid codes are automatically removed from the order, and you can add new order codes, as appropriate, before filing the order.