[jazoom]

I disagree. Doctors can't be expected to be available 100% of the time. The only doctor to see this patient's result was the pathologist (or should have been before being sent off to the requesting doctor). It had not yet been handed over to the requesting doctor in a fail-proof manner.

The pathology company I send my samples to contacts my clinic to ensure we received urgent results. This it's important because there's no guarantee the message ever arrived in the doctor's inbox. If you work in tech you should know this to be the case.

The only way to ensure timeliness is for the pathology company to contact the patient directly if they can't verbally hand over to the requesting doctor.