Direct Laboratory Notification of Communicable Diseases

2.4 End-to-end laboratory notification process map

The following map sets out the main notification routes required for different circumstances – depending on whether a manual or electronic notification system is used and whether more than one laboratory is involved with testing the sample.
Figure 4: The main notification routes

Clinician	Laboratory 1	Laboratory 2	Overseas laboratory	Esr	Medical officer of health receives notification
Sends notification to relevant mo of h on suspicion of communicable disease (phone, fax, email, HL7)
requests laboratory test	Scenario 1 Performs test. Uses laboratory notification flowcharts to assess if and when to send a notification to MO of H. If notifiable, the lab must immediately send notification to MO of H.
	if using a manual system of notification, then faxes or phones or emails relevant MO of H.
	if using the national electronic system, then sends an hl7 2.1 or 2.4 message to relevant MO of H via episurv.			ESR processes the message in real time and sends to the relevant MO of H.
receives test results	Sends test results back to the clinician.
	Scenario 2 if laboratory generates either a partial or first result and then sends a sample to another laboratory for testing, then it sends notifiable cases to MO of H (manual or electronic).
	sends sample to second laboratory	tests sample. If notifiable result, notifies MO of H Sends test results to clinician and/or laboratory 1 Where possible lets original laboratory know the laboratory 2 has notified when sending back the test results.
	laboratory receives a sample that it cannot test and must forward to another laboratory	tests sample. If results are notifiable, sends notification to MO of H Sends test results back to practitioner and/or laboratory 1
	Scenario 3 Laboratory receives sample that requires testing overseas. Any notifiable results from initial testing must be notified to MO of H. Sends test to overseas laboratory. All notifiable test results received from overseas laboratory must be notified to MO of H.		Lab performs tests and sends results back to original NZ laboratory.