Turnaround Times

N1 Health Group Ltd · Last updated: 24 September 2026

The short answer

3–5 working days from the day you post your sample.

That figure applies to every test on our menu. Not from the day you order, and not from the day your blood is taken — from the day the sample goes into the post.

How we count

Working days means Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays. A sample posted on a Tuesday is typically reported by the following Monday or Tuesday.

The clock starts when you post, because that is the first moment the timing is out of your hands and into ours. We have no way of knowing when you will book your appointment, and it would be misleading to start counting from your order.

Every test on our menu is reported by the laboratory within 24 hours of receiving your sample, counted in working days. The rest of the window is postal transit. The laboratory's own figure is that around 98% of samples reach them within 3 days of posting on their tracked postal kits.

That 24 hours is the laboratory's published target rather than a guarantee. They make every effort to meet it but do not warrant that it will be achieved in any particular instance, and the post is outside anybody's control. We do not promise next-day results and we would be sceptical of anyone who does.

The laboratory receives samples Monday to Friday between 08:30 and 17:00, and on Saturday mornings between 09:00 and 13:00. Because the turnaround is counted in working days, a sample arriving on a Saturday starts its clock on the Monday. Posting on a Friday to catch Saturday reception does not gain you a day.

One thing worth knowing: your report is released once all the tests on your order are complete. Adding a marker to a panel does not slow you down on our menu, because everything reports in the same window — but it is the reason we will not quietly add a slow test to a fast panel.

The full journey

Two routes are shorter than the table above. If you booked a nurse home visit, no kit is posted to you: the nurse brings the tubes and takes your sample away, which removes the outbound postal leg entirely. If you use the laboratory's London walk-in centre, your sample is taken there and sent on to the laboratory directly rather than through the post, so there is no return postal leg either and results typically reach you in 2 working days rather than 3–5. A finger-prick order removes the appointment entirely but keeps both postal legs, so the 3–5 working day figure still applies.

Why we ask you to book Monday to Thursday

Blood samples are perishable. Some markers — the full blood count in particular — are only stable for around 72 hours after the draw.

A sample posted on a Friday afternoon sits in the postal network over the weekend. By Monday it may be outside the stability window, and the laboratory will reject it. That means a wasted appointment, a replacement kit, and a second needle in your arm.

Collect your sample on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, and post it the same day it is taken, before the last collection. This applies to every order, whether your sample is taken by a professional or by finger prick at home. This single instruction prevents most avoidable failures.

What makes it take longer

• Posting late in the week, for the reason above.
• Bank holidays, which remove working days from both the postal and laboratory legs.
• Postal delays, which are outside our control and outside the laboratory's.
• A sample that cannot be processed. If the laboratory cannot run your sample — insufficient volume, clotting, haemolysis, a labelling problem — we aim to tell you within 1 working day and the process restarts. Our Refunds & Cancellations Policy sets out who bears the cost.
• Referred markers. Some specialist tests are sent on to a partner laboratory rather than run in-house, which adds days. Nothing on our current menu is a referred test — every profile, panel and add-on we sell is run at our laboratory. If we ever add one, it will say so on the product page before you buy.

Turnaround by test

Every profile, panel and add-on marker currently on our menu carries a laboratory turnaround of 24 hours from receipt, which is why the same 3–5 working day figure applies across the board. There is no slow test hiding behind a headline number.

This is not a rounding of an average. It is the published turnaround for each individual marker we sell, checked one by one against the laboratory's routine test list, and we deliberately do not sell the markers that cannot meet it. Several tests were left off our menu precisely because they take 1–3 weeks, or because the sample has to be spun and frozen within an hour of the draw, which is impossible by post.

If that ever changes for a specific marker, it will be stated both here and on that product's page before you buy.

Accreditation

Our laboratory partner is a UKAS-accredited medical laboratory, number 10641, accredited to ISO 15189:2022. The laboratory is registered with the Care Quality Commission. You can read their current schedule of accreditation yourself, or find it at any time on the UKAS website by searching that number.

Two markers on our menu sit outside that accreditation scope: Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR) and Zinc. Both are run by the same laboratory, on the same analysers, by the same staff. The laboratory's report will carry a note against them. The flag reflects the scope of the accreditation certificate, not the quality of the analysis or of your sample. We would rather tell you this here than have it surprise you on your report.

One thing to be clear about

We send you the laboratory's report exactly as it is issued, with the laboratory's own reference ranges. We do not interpret, review or comment on results. If you want to understand what yours mean, take the report to your GP or another qualified healthcare professional.

Questions

Anything about timing, your order, or where your sample has got to — email contact@n1health.co.uk and we will tell you what we know.