He said Vybe received the results the following day. ![]() Since they weren’t in the Vybe system yet, Hotz concluded that LabCorp simply hadn’t pushed them through. He asked one of his operational managers if they could track her results down, and the employee was able to find them on the LabCorp site. Hotz himself had a family member who had been tested at Vybe but whose results were taking a long time. Hotz said he wasn’t sure why, over the summer, for instance, his employee could have had access to my test result before I was notified they were ready but noted that the hold up may still be on the lab’s end. Those who test positive are placed in a column indicating that they need to be notified by phone, which can take longer. A few times a day, staff members then transfer the results for those who tested negative into their patient portal, which he said should automatically trigger an alert to the person. Hotz said that as soon as a batch of results comes in from the commercial labs (Quest Diagnostics or LabCorp), they are automatically entered into Vybe’s electronic medical records system. Philly performs around 7,000 tests per day. On some days, Hotz estimates the Philly sites account for up to 7% of Philadelphia’s total test share per day. ![]() Combined, they perform in the ballpark of 500 PCR diagnostic SARS-Cov-2 tests per day. Vybe does most of its testing at its eight Philadelphia locations and mobile site, but also operates two clinics in Delaware County and one in Bucks. “I’ll tell you, we’re not perfect and the lab’s not perfect,” he said. But Peter Hotz, president and CEO of Vybe Urgent Care, walked me through the process of communicating test results for patients and acknowledged that because we’re all human, there are challenges to doing that in a timely way. This is, of course, a sample size of one and by no means a controlled trial. I got an alert notifying me they were ready the next day. ![]() A third time, over the summer, I had to contact Vybe to request my results, which a staff member informed me were negative, indicating that the results were apparently available but had not been communicated to me. It turned out, of the six times I’ve been tested since June, two of those times my results had come into the LabCorp portal one or two days earlier than Vybe notified me of my results. (I have been tested many times throughout the pandemic, after reporting in crowds and talking with people who may have been sick or exposed to the coronavirus.) Turns out, other viruses still exist and you can still get sick from them.)Ĭurious to see if this may have been part of the delay in the past, I cross-referenced the dates my previous test result had come into my LabCorp portal with the dates Vybe had alerted me my results were ready. The following morning I got an email from Vybe, notifying me that the results were ready. Sure enough, Tuesday evening at 6 p.m., I had an email in my inbox from LabCorp notifying me my results were available. It struck me as odd that one would take twice as long as the other, so when I got home, I signed up for an account directly with LabCorp to see if part of the delay may have been between the results being ready and me knowing about them. I noticed a sign on the wall at Vybe which said that the urgent care clinic sends the specimens for people with my insurance to LabCorp, which is the same company Jefferson uses to process tests. WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsor Previously, I got tested at Jefferson Health’s community testing site in Southwest Philadelphia and received results in 36 hours through the health system’s patient portal. 4 around 1 p.m., and I was told to expect results in three to five days. I got a diagnostic PCR test at Vybe Urgent Care on Monday, Jan. While that may be the total length of time from swab-in-nose to results-in-hand, patients might be able to get a peek a bit sooner.įor example, earlier this week I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to get a test. ![]() Recently though, most clinics and test sites in the Philly area have been telling their patients that results will be ready within three to five days. During June and July, backups at overwhelmed national labs made it common for patients to wait over a week for their results, rendering the tests essentially useless. Turnaround times for coronavirus test results are much faster than they were over the summer. Ask us about COVID-19: What questions do you have about the current surge?
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