Book a Laboratory Test
Blood tests can only be booked on the advice of a doctor or nurse, or if you have been contacted by the surgery and invited to do so. If a hospital doctor is requesting a blood test, then they must provide you with a form, which you should bring to your appointment. If you are having a blood test for a hospital outside our local area, then you will be asked to provide some more information to ensure that the results are communicated to your specialist safely.
Test results can be viewed on-line using Patient Access. We would encourage you to use this method if possible.
If telephoning for results please do so after 2pm as the receptionists are busy dealing with more urgent calls during the morning. The receptionist will be able to pass on the result to you provided that it has been viewed by a doctor, but they are not qualified to interpret the results.
You will need to give 2-3 days for most blood and urine samples to be tested and for the results to return to the practice. X-rays can take 2 weeks to return.
We will only release test results to the person to whom they relate unless that person has given prior permission for the release of this data or they are not capable of understanding the results.
When you take your test you will be told how long it will be before the results are returned to the practice. It is your responsibility to check your results and to make an appointment to discuss them with your doctor if you are advised to do so.
Secondary care (hospital) blood tests
As you are probably aware, in-line with most GP surgeries, we are experiencing unprecedented pressures on our service. One of the areas we have felt this pressure recently is in the demand for blood-test appointments. It may come as a surprise to some that we are neither funded nor resourced to provide blood test appointments or manage requests for secondary care (hospital) colleagues. We are only resourced to manage our own internal requests. The Lunesdale surgery have historically provided phlebotomy (blood sample-taking) services for hospital requests as an act of good-will, but we feel we are now at a tipping point where good-will no longer soaks up the ever-growing workload generated from elsewhere in the system.
We hope you understand that we must prioritise providing the core GP services and work for which we are contracted and resourced to do.
What to do if I have a request for secondary care blood test?
For blood test requests from a clinician who works in secondary care (hospital clinicians, consultant, specialists) it is the responsibility of the secondary care teams/ bloods service to perform this. We can no longer provide this service from the surgery.
We are advised that appointments for secondary care blood-taking can be booked directly by calling 01539 715700 between 10am-2pm – they have clinics in Kendal, Carnforth, and Lancaster. We can also access the CDC Heysham if patients have the request forms from the hospital.
If you wish to support local GP surgeries in being resourced to perform hospital bloods we highly encourage you to write to your MP and / or the Integrated Care Board – available on lscicb.contactus@nhs.net and 0300 373 3550.
Some Exceptions:
High Risk Blood Monitoring. If we prescribe your high risk medication, it is our responsibility to monitor your bloods.
The request has come from outside Morecambe Bay NHS Trust. The Secondary Care Bloods Service do not have the ability to forward results onto the requesting clinician from outside Morecambe Bay NHS Trust. For these infrequent circumstances we will endeavour to assist with relevant blood monitoring and forward the results back to the requesting clinician. An example might be bloods required for patients undergoing treatment at The Christie hospital.
