The sodium citrate, light blue top Vacutainer tubes are in limited supply nationwide. This is due to a manufacturer recall and the heavy use of light blue tops for coagulation testing the past year for COVID patients. All coagulation tests are collected in these tubes, and current usage will exceed expected supply. We are only receiving limited allocations of the tubes from vendors.  

In order for UMMC to best manage our limited supplies of these tubes, the laboratory has implemented an order validation point for most coagulation tests. Physicians will be prompted to consider the medical necessity of each test before accepting the order. 

If ordering a PT/INR alone, please consider ordering the Point of Care test where available. POC Coagucheck Plus meters have been distributed to as many inpatient and outpatient locations as possible. 

In an effort to streamline CD burned patient imaging requests, a new order is now available in Epic that will send the request to the radiology file room via an in-basket message. Simply enter and sign the order to start the CD Imaging burn request. 

A few things to note: 

• Disks should be picked up in the Radiology department. 
• There will be a 24 hour turnaround time on all requests *STAT requests will be processed ASAP 
• If this request is on behalf of a patient (who will be picking the disc up), please note they will still need to fill out a release and have their ID at pick-up. 
  • We will not process patient pick-up requests until they arrive. 

In an effort to continuously monitor and improve our Epic implementation and support activities, we are asking our UMMC Epic users to provide feedback to the Department of Information Systems (DIS) Epic team via this survey. 

We respect your time, so this is a quick survey that should take no more than 5-8 minutes to complete. 

To access the survey, click here or scan the QR code below. Thank you! We appreciate your help!