The laboratory have raised a recent increasing issue with sample barcode label quality so they did an audit for a couple of days and found some grainy barcodes from Ritchie Street group practice.

Most GP’s use Tquest blood requests and print the blood request forms for the patients and hand them to them, these Tquest blood forms also includes a number of stickly barcode labels on the printed sheet, which the patient then give to the Phlebotomist, who then attach the labels to the sample bottles and send to the laboratory.

A lot of the laboratory process is automated and if the barcode quality is poor the analysers can’t read the samples which can lead to delays.

Just wanted to pass feedback and would be grateful if you can remind practice about making sure the printer toner is printing good quality labels.