Documenting EEG read turnaround and reader accountability
Turning 'sent to the reader' from a hope into a record: pending-read aging, signed-read evidence, report references, and the reconciliation between studies read here and reports on file.
The gap between performed and read
Laboratory standards expect studies to be interpreted by qualified readers with records that support it (ABRET's LAB-EEG standards address interpretation and reporting practices; see the current published edition). Operationally, the hard part is the queue: studies sit between technologist completion and physician interpretation, and in most labs that queue is invisible until a referring physician calls.
A defensible practice makes the queue itself a record: which studies await interpretation, how long each has waited, and at what age the wait escalates to someone accountable.
A read is evidence, not a status
Marking a study read is a claim; recording who signed it and the report reference in the reporting system is evidence. The distinction matters at survey time because the reviewable chain is study, signer, report. A lab that records signer and reference at completion can reconcile: of the studies marked read this period, how many have a report reference on file, and which specific studies lack one.
Identity, not just a typed name
Reader accountability improves again when the signer is a governed identity rather than free text. Typed names drift: initials, misspellings, a departed physician's name in six variants. Binding reads to a maintained roster of reading physicians, with name variants reconciled, turns per-reader accountability from string matching into a report.
Where this comes from in Axiom OrderFlow
Pending reads age visibly with escalation thresholds; read completion records the signing physician and report reference under governance that requires a reasoned correction to change them; and the reads reconciliation reports, for any window, how many completed reads have a report reference and a roster-bound signer, naming the specific studies that lack either. The Evidence Pack prints the turnaround and reconciliation exhibits directly from those records.