The Ardens Blood Test Due Analyser alerts practice staff to any blood tests due for the patient. This is based on any long term conditions they are diagnosed with, prescribed medication, and recorded diary entries. We also include patients eligible for CVD primary prevention screening based on NICE guidance. Please see full guidance on the items included here.


Please note - The blood test due analyser only alerts for bloods due in ‘steady-state’ drug monitoring. It will not flag for monitoring requirements related to drugs recently started or where doses are being titrated as these often have different monitoring frequencies.


Blood Test Due Analyser Alert

When accessing a patient record, practice staff will be alerted to any blood test due 

today and blood test diary entries due within a month or overdue. The alert will 

display in the pink QOF box.



Hovering over the alert will display further details of the blood tests due.


 

The blood test due are broken down into four categories:

  1. Medication monitoring bloods due or overdue - include blood tests relating to prescribed repeat medications. It will only flag for bloods due in 'steady-state' drug monitoring. 
  2. Long-term conditions blood due or overdue - includes blood tests relating to the patient's long term-conditions.
  3. Diary recall bloods due within 1 month or overdue - includes all Ardens Diary Recall System blood tests.
  4. CVD Primary Prevention bloods due or overdue - includes blood tests where a patient is eligible for screening for CVD primary prevention. 


We recognise that GP practices may wish to decide themselves which blood tests are actually required and this is the reason we have created these categories. For example if you are not using the Ardens Diary Recall System that you may ask your staff to ignore category (3) above.


Activation

This resource has been deployed to your GP practice as 'inactive'. Please complete the following steps if you wish to use it:

  1. Navigate to Resource Publisher > Shared Folders > Ardens Live Toolset > Blood Test Due Analyser.
  2. Right-click on each of the two resources displayed and select Status > Activate


Once activated, the 'Blood Test Due Alert' will become active for all clinicians in your GP practice. If you wish to allow non-clinicians to see this alert (e.g. reception) then you will need to replace the triggers to include them. To do this:

Right click on the Blood Test Due Alert protocol and select Protocol Manager Triggers

Select Add in the bottom section entitled 'Local Triggers'. 

Select Yes to the box saying 'This trigger already exists as a default trigger. If you add this trigger, the default trigger will be disabled. Do you want to continue?'  

Select 'Load Patient Record'Run Mode 'Always Run'. 

Select 'All Job Categories', or the specific job categories you require the alert to display for.

Repeat this process for the system trigger 'Update Patient Record'.

Click OK.



Blood Test Due Analyser Template

For practice staff that wish to view further details on the blood test due now or blood tests due soon for the patient, double click on the Blood Test Due alert. 


This will launch the Blood Test Due Analyser template.



The red warning sign signifies the blood test is due now and the hour glass signifies the blood test is due soon. 




For blood tests due now the tick box will be selected by default and will display in the consultation once the template is saved. It is important to note that this is for the record only and does not 'request' the test(s).



For any diary entries recorded for blood tests using the Ardens Diary Recall System, the date due will display to the right of the field.



The Further information section provides a link to this support article should you wish to refer back to it at anytime.



Saving the template will record in the consultation the blood tests that have been ticked and will prompt the user to launch the Ardens Phlebotomy template. This allows clinicians to record details of any procedures carried out.


Please note that the Blood Test Due Analyser is limited by the functionality that is available within EMIS Web. This means that users will still need to launch their usual system to generate phlebotomy requests (e.g. ICE).  



CVD Primary Prevention

If there are particular patients that you feel it is not necessary to alert blood test due for CVD primary prevention, practices can apply a particular code to the patient record to suppress the Ardens "Blood Test Due" alerts relating to CVD primary prevention for this current fiscal year. The code to apply is as follows:


Aware of overall cardiovascular disease risk - 2453481000000111


Please note - this will not supress blood test alerts generated for medicines management, chronic diseases or diary entries. 


Where there are further checks required for drug monitoring (e.g. BP, BMI), an additional Prescribing monitoring alert is available.



This alert has been deployed to your EMIS system ‘inactive’. Should you wish to use this alert, you will need to activate both the BMI and BP template and the Prescribing monitoring alert protocol.



To do this:

  1. Navigate to Resource Publisher > Shared Folders > Ardens Live Toolset > Blood Test Due Analyser.
  2. Right-click on each of the two resources displayed above and select Status > Activate.

 

Once activated, the alert is trigged to be displayed when the Blood Test Due Analyser template is saved. If there is additional drug monitoring for the patient, you will be presented with a message asking if you wish to launch the drug monitoring template or the BP/BMI template if appropriate.

 

If you require any further assistance on the process above, please contact Ardens support on: support-emis@ardens.org.uk