Your Results

Once you’ve had your pathology test, we understand you might be anxious about your results. Everyone is legally entitled to a copy of their pathology test results but we strongly advise you to contact your requesting doctor for these results. Your doctor is in the best position to understand and interpret your test results and the potential impact on your health. Each doctor has their own protocol on when and how they release results, so it’s best to contact them for more information.

In order to best protect patient privacy, we’re unable to release your results to you over the phone. If you’d like a copy of your results, your doctor or healthcare provider can make this request on the request form during your consultation.

Accessing your pathology results online with My Health Record

My Health Record (MHR) is a national digital record system. It gives you access to a secure online summary of your health information, including test results, medical conditions, medicines, allergies and immunisations.

Everyone has a My Health Record account unless they’ve opted out. When a clinical document is uploaded to your record, it can be viewed by you and the healthcare providers involved in your care, people you have invited to access your record and people who have legal access to your record.

Some of the benefits of having pathology results on your record include:

• Keeping track of the tests you’ve had and when you had them
• Monitoring your results over time
• Improving access to your health information by your healthcare team
• Reducing unnecessary tests and scans
• Helping your healthcare team save time and focus on your healthcare.

Who can access my results?

We’re bound by privacy laws covering the use and release of personal information. This means pathology results can only be released to health practitioners directly involved in your care. Other potentially interested parties, such as family members, cannot access your results without your consent.

There might be instances where we are required to release your test results to a third party such as:

• When we’re ordered to do so by a court of law
• When we’re required by law to send results of an infection that’s a notifiable disease (such as measles, hepatitis, COVID-19) to the relevant health authority, or the results of newly diagnosed cancers to Cancer Registries.