Your results usually arrive in the portal before we have had time to call, and we know what happens next: a flagged value, a search engine, a bad evening. This guide is the version of that search we would like you to read first.
What the flag means
A lab flags any value outside its reference range. That range is where 95 percent of healthy people fall, which means one in twenty healthy people is flagged on every single test by definition. If you had a panel of 20 values, the odds that at least one is flagged are close to two in three. A flag is a prompt for your doctor to look, not a diagnosis.
The three that worry people for no reason
Slightly high cholesterol after a big dinner the night before. Slightly low vitamin D in March, which describes most of Brooklyn. A creatinine just over the line in someone who trains hard and drank little water that morning. All three are common, all three get a note from us, and none of them needs a second thought before we talk.
What to actually look at
Read the note your doctor attaches to the result, not the numbers. It says whether anything changes, whether we repeat the test, and when. If a value is genuinely important — a very low hemoglobin, a high potassium, a glucose that suggests diabetes — you will hear from us by phone the same day, before you have even opened the portal.
If you want to understand a value for its own sake, message your doctor through the portal. A two-line question gets a two-line answer within one business day, and it is a much better use of everyone’s time than a search engine at midnight.
