Objective: Increasing the role of laboratories in the diagnosis processes is associated with a growing number of the requested laboratory tests. However, this situation is considered as time consuming and also accompanied by an increase in costs, as well as additional workload. Reducing unnecessary test requests are supposed to reduce both workload and costs as well as the waiting period of the patients experience. In this perspective, we aimed to investigate the effects of the changing the placements of the laboratory tests placed in the test request panel, which are considered to be familiar to the physicians, on the number of test requests.

Material and Methods: In study, 5 test conduct in the biochemistry laboratory (Amylase, Lipase, Phosphorus, Magnesium and LDH) and 9 tests conduct in the hormone laboratory (ATG, Ca-125, CA 15- 3, CA 19-9, CEA, Folate, Vitamin B12, T3 and Free PSA) were included. Placements of the tests on the request panel were transported to a separate tab outside the current placements remained unchanged for 3 years. The rates for the total number of tests were calculated by determining the monthly individual numbers of the tests requested in last 3 months prior to as well as consecutive 3 months following the change procedure. The number of the tests in the1 st month of 3 months prior to the change procedure was determined as the ratio of 100%, while the percent changes from the first month of the following months were determined for each test.

Results: Biochemistry test requests were decreased by 28.3% following the change procedure as compared to the average ratio of the first 3 months. In the hormone tests, the decrease ratio following the change procedure was 12.1% in total.

Conclusion: Our results support that the habits of the physicians have an important role in requesting laboratory tests. Changing the placements of the tests were associated with less demand for requesting the certain tests. In this respect, we suggest that changing the placements on the test request panel in laboratory tests will contribute to the economy, decrease workload and shorten the waiting period of the patients.