Generic domain reference (backlog E5.1).

Depth 1 — one line

A report moves through a small set of statuses — roughly dictated → transcribed/draft → finalized → released — and “where is my report” tickets almost always mean the report is stuck at one specific stage, not missing entirely.

Depth 2 — the stages

  1. Dictated. Radiologist dictates findings, via a dictation platform or directly in RIS/PACS. Nothing is visible outside RIS yet.
  2. Transcribed / draft. Speech becomes text — automatically (speech recognition) or via a transcription step. Status is typically something like “preliminary” or “draft” — visible in RIS, not yet authoritative.
  3. Finalized / signed. The radiologist reviews and signs the report. This is the point the report becomes the official record.
  4. Released / distributed. The finalized report is sent onward — back to the ordering EHR, to referring providers, sometimes to a patient portal. This is a separate step from finalization and has its own failure modes.

Depth 3 — where “where’s my report” tickets actually point

  • Stuck at dictated/draft, no finalized report. Look at the radiologist workflow side — pending signature queue, dictation platform issue — not at an interface. This is not a RIS-to-EHR problem yet.
  • Finalized in RIS, never appears in the EHR. This is an outbound interface problem — the report-release interface, distinct from the inbound order interface. Confirm the report shows “released” status in RIS before escalating the interface, since a report that’s merely finalized-not-released will look identical to the referring provider either way.
  • Released, but to the wrong recipient or none. Usually a routing rule or distribution configuration issue tied to how the original order specified the ordering provider — check whether the order’s referring- provider field was populated correctly, which traces back to the order lifecycle’s “ordered” stage, not to anything report-side.

The useful triage question is almost always “what status does RIS show for this report” before anything else — the answer usually narrows which of the three failure shapes above applies immediately.