Annals of internal medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Computerized display of past test results. Effect on outpatient testing.
To determine the effect of displaying previous results of diagnostic tests on the ordering of selected outpatient tests. ⋯ Presenting physicians with previous test results reduced the ordering of those tests. The actual effect may have been greater than 13%, because there were reductions in study tests ordered for both intervention and control patients during the intervention period when compared with the pre-intervention period, and both tended to rise after the intervention, or display, was turned off.