FAQs regarding laboratory tests

No, you can’t. You must always present a referral from a health unit. We will receive your referral electronically if it has been made by the public health services (hospital or health centre) of North Savo, North Karelia, South Savo or East Savo. Paper copies of referrals are provided by private doctors and occupational health care, for example.

Please ask your doctor or nurse for preparation instructions when they assign you a lab test. Please also ask your doctor for information regarding your tests and their significance in terms of your treatment. 

Your results will be provided by your health unit.

Your health unit will make the referral and register it in Omakanta. From ISLAB, test results are transferred to your health unit, which registers them in Omakanta. If any referrals or results are missing, please contact your health unit.

Yes, if you bring a paper copy of the referral made by your doctor with you. Sampling will be based on the referral. There are some limitations regarding tests based on referrals from private doctors. For more information, please see Appointments and services.

Only in exceptional cases. It is important that you use a sample container provided by your health unit or the laboratory. When you request a sample container, we will check your referral. Thus, we aim to ensure that the sample is fit for examination when you bring it to the laboratory, and that we can analyse it without delay (the health unit makes the necessary request in advance).

Please see the instructions provided by the sampling point where you plan to leave your sample. In some laboratories, the serving number machine has a separate serving number for picking up and leaving sample containers.

You can drink a glass of water while fasting. Please avoid eating gum.

For tests that require fasting, you should stop eating and drinking 10 hours before the test. Avoid fasting for more than 14 hours, although tests can still be carried out after that.

We will ask for your social security number after printing the sample label. This way we can make sure that the sample label that we have printed definitely has the correct person’s information on it. Then, when we stick the label to the sample container, we can be sure that the sample container contains the correct patient’s information and that the test results will be received by the right person.

Please consider going to one of our other sampling points. You can leave a sample at any of ISLAB’s sampling points. If the laboratory has separate serving numbers for emergency customers, you can take one of those. You can check this information in the details of each sampling point.

No, it wasn’t. Patients are called in for sampling within 10 minutes from their appointment time.