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Primary Care Alberta Clinical Updates - November 27, 2025
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Antibiotic use resources
November 18 to 24 is World Antimicrobial Awareness Week! Primary Care Alberta has a resource to help you educate patients on when antibiotics are necessary. You can refer your patients to the Guide to Wise Use of Antibiotics, which is available in many languages and produced by AHS and Primary Care Alberta.
Referral pathway update
To align with the updated Screening for Life cervical screening guidelines for HPV testing, the Adult Gynecology Referral Pathway has been updated with a new colposcopy reason for referral: High Risk HPV.
Important: Delayed delivery of a minority of lab results to “copy to” (cc:) providers
Currently, a minority of lab results for tests ordered in Connect Care may experience delayed delivery to “copy to” (cc:) recipients (providers identified in the “copy to” section of the lab order). Results delivery to authorizing providers is not impacted. Results are available in the Connect Care patient chart, Alberta Netcare, and the patient portals.
Support teams have identified the root cause of this issue and are dedicated to implementing a solution. Updates will be provided.
If you have any questions about the delivery of specific lab results, call Alberta Health Services Provincial Service Desk at 1-877-311-4300. Please have your location, contact information and Prac ID available when you call. To investigate issues, examples of documents/results that were not delivered as expected are helpful. Provide details: type of information (lab results, discharge summaries, consult letters, appointment notifications, etc.), patient (CSN), date (test date), order/accession ID, etc.
Thank you for your support and understanding.
Additional Information:
OVERVIEW: Lab Routing Optimization
FAQ: Lab Routing Optimization
ahs.ca/ccresultstocommunity
Request for Provider/Prescriber Set-Up in Health Information Systems Form.
Lab bulletin: Formalin-fixed specimens & exempt human specimen packaging
To ensure the safe transport of specimens to the laboratory for testing, Alberta Precision Laboratories reminds primary care teams that formalin-fixed specimens can be classified as “exempt human specimens” and shipped under Section 1.42 of the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Regulations. “Exempt human” packaging must be designed, constructed, filled, closed, secured and maintained so that under normal conditions of transport, including handling, there will be no release or damage to the specimen and no risk to workers.
Lab bulletin: Removal of Epic enter/edit functionality for POCT Pregnancy Urine Manual test result entry
Effective November 25, 2025, the “Enter/Edit” (E/E) functionality in Epic software for point-of-care-testing (POCT) Pregnancy Urine Manual test result entry will be removed. This change is part of the phased approach to remove all POCT E/E functionality.
All POCT patient results must be documented through the provincial POCT middleware, AegisPOC, either automatically with connected devices or through manual test result entry for unconnected devices. This workflow facilitates positive patient identification and completes patient test result documentation in Connect Care, including Epic and Netcare.
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