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Some laboratories never see a donor. Sealed specimens arrive from external collection sites with their chain-of-custody paperwork already complete, and what the lab owes back is a report an external Medical Review Officer (MRO) can act on. Reference Lab — Intake to Report Only is that shape: intake → screening → confirmation → finalized PDF report, with the collection, MRO and DER modules taken away.

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Switch the mode

1

Open the Lab Workflow card

Under Settings, open the Lab Workflow tab. The card explains its own scope: “Determines which laboratory module is shown to your staff. Switching modes does not delete any data — orders remain in their original workflow.” Your current mode carries an Active badge.
2

Choose Reference Lab

Select Reference Lab — Intake to Report Only, which carries a New badge: “For laboratories that receive sealed specimens from external collection sites and produce a PDF report for an external MRO. Hides collection, MRO, and DER modules.”Choosing it reveals an alert headed Reference Lab mode: “This mode hides the collection, MRO review, and DER reporting modules from the DOT-LIMS sidebar. Orders move from intake → screening → confirmation → finalized PDF report. Existing in-flight orders are unaffected.”
3

Save, then tell your team to reload

Select Save Workflow Mode — Reset abandons the change. The toast reads Lab workflow updated — Reload your DOT-LIMS pages to see the new mode, and anyone with a DOT-LIMS page already open keeps the old mode until they do. Reference Lab mode also reveals two further settings cards — Lab Report Branding and Custom Panels — worth setting up before your first report goes out. See MRO review and the employer report.
Switching modes migrates nothing. Orders already in flight stay in the workflow they were raised under and finish there, so a lab mid-changeover will run both shapes side by side for a while. That is intended.

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What you’re looking at

The DOT entries are renamed rather than removed, and the screens behind them are re-labelled for intake working: The remaining columns are Specimen ID, LAN, Donor, Agency and Status, and a row’s ⋯ menu offers View / Proceed, Copy Specimen ID and — once a LAN exists — Copy LAN. The collection-supplies sheet is hidden because a reference lab transcribes an external chain-of-custody form and runs no collection of its own; on Standard Clinical Lab the DOT entries are hidden entirely instead. The empty state. A queue with nothing on it reads No specimens in the queue — “When a specimen arrives, click + New Intake to log it.” On the history page it reads No finalized reports yet.

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Book in a specimen

Select New Intake to open the New Lab Intake Order sheet. Its five cards run in the order you will work them.
1

Identify the specimen

On Specimen Identification, enter Specimen / CCF ID * — “Scan the barcode on the CCF or type the 12-character ID printed on the bottle.” Scan it with a barcode wedge, use the camera button, or generate a random ID where no external form applies.Lab Accession Number (LAN) is filled in for you — “Auto-generated. Edit if needed.” — in the shape LAB-{year}-{5 digits}. Then record Date & Time Received *: when the specimen physically arrived at your bench.
2

Record the test information

On Test Information, Agency / Program * takes Non-DOT, FMCSA, FAA, FRA, FTA, PHMSA or USCG, each spelled out in full in the list. Test Reason * takes Pre-Employment, Random, Reasonable Suspicion, Post-Accident, Return to Duty, Follow-Up or Other.Specimen Type * is Oral Fluid or Urine, pre-selected to oral fluid, and says why it matters: “Oral fluid uses HHS OFMG cutoffs and does not require Specimen Validity Testing. Urine uses HHS MG cutoffs and requires SVT.” Read it off the CCF rather than accepting the default. Then pick the Drug Panel * — see Screen and confirm a specimen.
3

Attach the donor

Under Donor, use Search Patient * (“Select donor…”) to attach the person, then record the identifier the chain-of-custody form carries — an Employee ID, an SSN, or a CDL with its CDL State and CDL Number. Identifiers are stored encrypted and shown masked afterwards, so you cannot read one back off the order; to correct one, enter it in full again.
4

Transcribe the collection metadata

Collection Metadata (from physical CCF) is where the external site’s record goes: Date & Time Collected (“As written on CCF Step 4”), Collector Name (“As signed on CCF”), Collector Phone (“SAMHSA-required contact for the collector.”), the Collection Site Name, Address and Phone, an optional Referring Doctor / Facility, and Directly Observed Collection — “Check if the CCF indicates the collection was directly observed per 49 CFR § 40.67.” Copy it from the form in front of you rather than from memory.
5

Record the employer and create the order

Employer (from CCF Step 1) takes the Employer Name and Employer Address, plus CCF Remarks for anything in the CCF Step 3 box. Then select Create Lab Intake Order — Lab intake order created — LAN: {LAN} — and the order joins the Lab Intake Queue under Intake Pending. A referring doctor attributes the work for your referrer reporting, see Referring clinics.
The Specimen / CCF ID must match the ID on the bottle exactly. A specimen ID that does not match its label is a fatal flaw: the test cannot be used for any employment-related action and has to be cancelled. Scan it rather than typing it wherever you can, and check the last four characters against the bottle before you save.

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Scanning the specimen ID

The field accepts three inputs. A handheld barcode wedge types into it like a keyboard and needs no setup. The camera button opens Scan Specimen / CCF ID — “Point your device camera at the barcode on the Custody and Control Form or specimen bottle.” — and a successful read gives Specimen ID scanned. Where no external form exists, the refresh button generates a random ID. Two camera messages you may meet: Camera access requires HTTPS. Open this page over a secure connection to scan. means the connection, so use the normal app.clinikehr.com address rather than a local one; Camera permission denied. Allow camera access in your browser settings to scan. means the browser permission. A wedge scanner works in both cases and is the more reliable choice at a busy receiving bench.

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If the connection drops

Intake keeps working offline, because a specimen arriving at a receiving bench cannot wait for a network. A bar at the top of the sheet shows the state of the queue and stays quiet while you are online with nothing waiting.
  • No connection: Intake saved offline — It will sync automatically when the connection returns.
  • A connection that fails mid-request: Connection dropped — intake queued. The order is sent once and once only when you are back, even if the first attempt had already reached us.
  • A save the server actively refuses — a duplicate specimen ID, a bad field — is Failed to create order and is not queued.
Only capture goes offline. Screening, confirmation and finalisation need a connection, by design.

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From intake to report

Once the order is on the queue, the rest is the ordinary bench workflow with two stages removed:

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Who can do this

Role decides whether Lab Intake appears, and role also decides who may book a specimen in. Permission takes over at the bench — from the screening readings onward. Opening the queue and working it are different tests. A phlebotomist or lab scientist reaches this page through their route list, then meets a job-title check on the intake and accession forms. If someone can see the queue but is refused on save, that is the role, and no toggle in the permissions sheet changes it. From the bench onward the permissions are real. A Lab Manager does not hold Verify and authorise results by default — that comes from the access tier, not the administrative role, which is why a manager can book a specimen in and still find Finalize Lab Report greyed out. A QC Officer is review-only by design.
  • Enforcement is opt-in, per person. Someone never saved in the permissions sheet is unrestricted, and the sheet warns “Saving starts enforcing”.
  • A denied action is recorded; an allowed one is not. Renaming a sidebar row is a convenience, not a security boundary.
A site registered as a collection centre cannot run intake at all: “This site is a collection center — register specimens and dispatch them to your laboratory. Accessioning, screening and reporting are done at the full lab and are disabled here.” See Permissions.

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Check it worked

  • The sidebar reads Lab Intake and Intake History, and the queue is headed Lab Intake Queue.
  • The status filter offers All Orders, Intake Pending, In Analysis and Finalized.
  • Your new order appears under Intake Pending with the LAN from the toast.
  • Settings › Lab Workflow now also shows Lab Report Branding and Custom Panels.

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Common issues

They need to reload. The success message says so: Reload your DOT-LIMS pages to see the new mode.
Orders raised before the switch finish in their original workflow. That is deliberate — nothing is migrated, and nothing is lost.
Setting the mode is an owner or manager action. Ask one of them rather than working around it — see Roles.
Read the message. Camera access requires HTTPS means the connection; Camera permission denied means the browser permission. Either way a barcode wedge scanner will work immediately.
Both are correct behaviour. An offline order is queued locally and sends itself when you are back online; identifiers are stored encrypted and shown masked, so to change one, enter the full value again.
Build it under Settings › Lab Workflow › Custom Panels, and check each custom analyte has a confirmation cutoff for the specimen type — without one it will not appear. See MRO review and the employer report.

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FAQ

No. Nothing is migrated. Orders already in flight stay in the workflow they were raised under and finish there — so for a while you will see both shapes on the same queue, which is correct.
The Specimen / CCF ID belongs to the external collection site and is printed on the bottle; the Lab Accession Number is yours, generated as LAB-{year}-{5 digits}, and is what your own bench and report quote.
No, and that is the point of it. Reference Lab mode hides the collection module and the collection-supplies sheet entirely. A lab doing both wants Both — Standard + DOT Full Workflow instead.
An external Medical Review Officer. You finalize the report and send it to them — see MRO review and the employer report. ClinikEHR never verifies a result on their behalf.
Yes — capture is queued locally and syncs when the connection returns. Screening, confirmation and finalisation still need a connection.