You can submit a lab test without having a sample date appear on it. This can be useful if you are sending a home testing kit to a patient who will need to fill in their own sample date when they perform the test.

For general information on how to submit a lab test, see here.

Note: To change this setting, you must have a role assigned to you that gives you editing permissions for Medical settings. For more information on roles, see here.

You can make it so that your practice does not automatically set a default sample date when you create a lab request, on the Settings page:

1. Go to the Medical settings tab.

2. Scroll down to the Labs section and untick Default sample date to current date.

3. Click Save at the top of the screen.

Now, when you add a lab request to a consultation note, the 'Sample date' will be blank. Do not type anything into that box if you want to keep the sample date blank:

When you request the lab test, no sample date appears on the form or label:

Note: If neither patient or the clinician fills out the sample date in the lab request form, the laboratory will fill it in based on their internal policy. The sample date entered in the consultation (if any) will be overwritten by the value defined and sent by the laboratory according to their internal policy.