Lab Tests Online-UK is recommended by GP’s in WHICH? magazine
“Which? exists to make individuals as powerful as the organisations they deal with in their daily lives”. It is the largest independent consumer body in the UK, with over 680,000 members subscribing to their magazine and 330,000 members online. Which? aims to provide consumers with advice to help them make informed choices, campaigns to make people’s lives fairer, simpler and safer and puts consumer’s needs first to bring them better value.
The September edition of member’s magazine featured the article ‘Help your GP to help you’ providing the reader with an insight into GP appointments. It provides pragmatic advice on how to prepare for a GP appointment, how patients can enhance interactions at a GP appointment and how to get the best outcome from the perspective of the patient. The article uses vignettes and feedback from GP’s and patients alike to guide the reader through an appointment, how the GP structures the appointment, what information they need from the patient and how best to deliver it. The article features a patient story from a patient at Haughton Thornley Surgery, who advocates access to full medical records including test results and emphasises the importance of this service for developing ‘a partnership of trust’ with her GP and enabling her to monitor her condition and find out more about it in order to get the best health outcomes.
The article features ‘Useful websites recommended by GP’s’. Which? includes Lab Tests Online-UK as one of only five recommended and trusted websites. The ‘bottom line’ of the article includes advice to ‘look at your patient records and use information such as test results’ in order to ‘have really informed conversations with your GP and minimise the need for appointments’. This fits seamlessly with the objectives of Lab Tests Online-UK to provide peer-reviewed, non-commercial information to patients to help them understand their test results and empower them to be involved in their own healthcare. The article stresses the importance of patient preparation prior to their GP appointment and Lab Tests Online-UK is well placed as a free easy to access resource, in order to provide further understanding of their test results.
With the increase in GP practices providing online access to medical records and positive patient stories, such as those included in this article, Lab Tests Online-UK is the perfect resource to support patients accessing their results, therefore building on the ‘partnership of trust’ between the patient and the GP by providing patients with reliable information before or after they have had their 10 minute interaction with the clinician to understand their condition better and get involved in their own care.
This is a great endorsement from a completely independent super power in the consumer body market and as one of the three stakeholders, ACB, IBMS, RCPath, for Lab Tests Online-UK we appreciate your help in spreading the word about the website to your colleagues and bringing this article to their attention.
If you want to become a champion for the website, or have somewhere you can provide leaflets to patients please get in touch at labtestsonlineuk@acb.org.uk