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For Program Teams

How to Route Members to the Right Panel

A shareable decision guide for the people in your program: what an essential panel answers, what an advanced panel adds, and how to tell which one fits the question someone is actually asking.

6 min read•ReachWell Health Editorial Team•Reviewed for clinical accuracy
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How to Route Members to the Right Panel

Route by question, not by product

Panels are marker sets; people arrive with questions. Translate the question first. 'Am I healthy?' is a baseline question. 'Why am I exhausted by 3pm?' is a mechanism question. 'Is my training working?' is a tracking question. Each maps cleanly to a panel depth.

The routing table

No symptoms, no recent bloodwork
Baseline. An essential panel covering blood sugar, lipids, kidney and liver function, thyroid, and inflammation is the right starting point.
Persistent fatigue or low energy
Go deeper. Iron studies, B12, vitamin D, thyroid, and cortisol context are where the answers usually sit.
Training hard or tracking recovery
Go deeper. Iron and nutrient status plus inflammation and hormone markers explain plateaus a scale cannot.
Family history of heart or metabolic disease
Prioritise the cardiovascular and metabolic set — ApoB, Lp(a), hs-CRP, HbA1c, and fasting insulin — over breadth for its own sake.
Hormone or cycle questions
Advanced. Sex-specific hormone markers are what distinguish these panels; a baseline panel will not answer the question.
Retesting after a change
Repeat the markers that moved, at the same time of day and under the same fasting conditions. Consistency matters more than breadth.

How to explain the choice

Give one recommendation and one sentence of reasoning: 'Because you have not had bloodwork in two years and feel fine, the essential panel gives you a baseline to measure against.' People accept a recommendation they understand. They stall on a comparison.

What to say about results

Set expectations before the sample is taken: most results will be unremarkable, a few will sit slightly outside range without meaning anything is wrong, and anything genuinely off should be reviewed with a clinician. Framing this early prevents the anxious follow-up and keeps the program credible.

Retest cadence

Three months for a deliberate change in nutrition, training, or supplementation. Six to twelve months for general tracking. Annual for a stable baseline. Book the retest window when the first result lands — it is the single easiest way to turn a one-off test into a program.

Common questions

Can we just offer the advanced panel to everyone?

You can, but it spends budget on markers most people will not act on and makes the meaningful results harder to see. Routing produces better action rates at a lower average cost.

What if someone's question does not fit the table?

Default to the baseline panel. It is the cheapest way to get real data, and it tells you whether a deeper panel is warranted next.

Does fasting change the recommendation?

Not the panel choice, but it changes the reading. Glucose, insulin, and triglycerides should be collected fasted, and repeat tests should match the original conditions.

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This assessment is educational and does not diagnose, treat, or provide medical advice. It is not a substitute for care from a licensed clinician.