electronically alerting doctors ...doesn't mean doctors will (a) open them (b) do anytihng ...

Electronic records, medical errors -- and the inescapable human factor | Booster Shots | Los Angeles Times
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... A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, has found that electronically alerting doctors of suspicious test results doesn't mean doctors will a) open the electronically delivered alert or b) act on it if they do.

And though you'd think that alerting more than one physician would reduce the chances that a patient would slip through the cracks, the study found just the opposite: Suspicious test results were less likely to be acted on, not more, presumably because each physician assumed the other doctor had taken the necessary steps.

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Of the alerts, 217 (18.1%) were unopened after two weeks.

And of the 1,196 alerts, 92 (7.7%) didn't receive timely follow-up, such as a call to a patient or ordering of more tests. (The definition of timely follow-up was within four weeks.)

Perhaps surprisingly, the rates of poor follow-up were about the same for reports that were unopened and reports that were opened.

But in cases when a radiologist actually got on the phone and talked to a physician about a test, follow-up was more likely. (This may have partly been due to those results being more serious than other abnormal tests, the authors said.) ...