Hold studies until their order arrives

Goal: no study reaches the PACS with the wrong patient. Studies are checked against their order in the worklist; those whose patient does not match wait for someone to fix them, and those whose order has not arrived yet wait for it.

Before you start

The worklist must have the orders: see Build a modality worklist from the RIS.

Steps

On the route that sends studies to the PACS, under Patient reconciliation:

1. Tick Check patients against their orders.
2. Leave Same Patient ID, other name, birth date or sex: take the order’s on: small differences (a missing middle name, a typo in the birth date) are corrected from the order without holding anything.
3. Tick Hold studies with no order (released when it arrives): a study that arrives before its order (an emergency, a late HL7 message) waits, and goes on by itself, with the order’s details, once the order arrives.

Working the queue

History › Reconciliation lists the studies held, across all nodes. Open one to see it next to its order, then:

• Use the order’s details (or search the worklist for the right order), and Release;
• release only some series, under a new Study Instance UID (a split), when two patients’ series were mixed;
• merge it into another held study;
• or Discard it.

A node that has had studies waiting for over an hour raises an alert, so the queue is not forgotten.

See Patient reconciliation.