Evaluation of family medicine polyclinic laboratory data from the perspective of rational examination request

ABSTRACT Aim: Laboratory test requests are increasing uncontrollably due to reasons such as easier access to laboratory tests with developing technological opportunities, defensive medicine practices due to fear of being sued, patient requests, and physicians not being able to spare enough time for their patients. This study aimed to investigate the effect of the training given to assistant physicians working in family medicine on the number and costs of laboratory tests. Materials and Methods: In this study, the effects of rational laboratory use training given to assistant physicians working in family medicine on the number and costs of laboratory tests were investigated. The study included 27,085 patient applications made to the Family Medicine outpatient clinic of Düzce University Research and Application Hospital between 01/06/2022-01/06/2024. Data from a total of 170,289 medical biochemistry and medical microbiology laboratory tests of 174 different types, which were requested directly or through consultation from these applications, were obtained from the hospital's information processing unit and evaluated. Results: It was observed that the training given to assistant physicians significantly reduced the total number of laboratory tests and their costs. At the same time, it was observed that it significantly reduced the number of tests per application and test costs per application. No significant difference was observed in the total variety of tests requested after the training. Conclusion: The results of the study were generally found to be compatible with the literature. It has been demonstrated that the training given to assistant physicians improves the use of laboratory resources and enables physicians to make more appropriate test choices, resulting in a significant decrease in both the number of tests and expenses.