We are writing to advise that as of 8 July, we will no longer be undertaking urine pregnancy testing at our laboratory.
We have seen a drop in urine pregnancy test requests sent to our laboratories from primary care over recent years. This is mainly due to the readily available sensitive pregnancy testing kits from high street pharmacies and the advent of patient self-referrals to ante-natal care.
Women can now easily perform pregnancy point of care tests in the comfort of their own homes and refer themselves to BHRUT ante-natal care online.
While the vast majority of surgeries no longer send us samples for urine pregnancy tests, there are a few which still do, and we have engaged and consulted with them since the beginning of the year in preparation.
Women can self-refer to the maternity services at BHRUT via the website. For specific cases where there is a clinical need indicated clearly on request forms, the laboratory can process a serum hCG test.
If you have any clinical queries, please do not hesitate to contact us via bhr-tr.biochemistry@nhs.net.
With kind regards,
Pandina
Pandina Kwong FRCPath
Consultant Clinical Lead Biochemist
Pandina.kwong@nhs.net