Difference between revisions of "Electronic Laboratory Reporting"

Revision as of 17:02, 22 July 2013

Electronic Laboratory Reporting (ELR), is the electronic transmission from laboratories to public health of laboratory reports which identify reportable conditions and infectious diseases through an automated and secure process. ELR will replace paper-based reporting for most reportable infectious diseases and has the potential to be used for reporting of other laboratory findings, such as cancer pathology reports and blood lead level results.

Benefits

• Timeliness.
• Reduction of manual data entry errors.
• Reports that are more complete.

Standards

In 1997, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public health partners got together to determine standards for electronically submitting surveillance data to public health laboratories across the country. These standards include:

• An electronic message format of standard Health Level Seven (HL7)
• Tests coded with the Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC)
• Results coded with the Systemized Nomenclature for Medicine terminology (SNOMED)

Meaningful use

Electronic Laboratory Reporting has been promoted as a public health priority for the past several years and its inclusion as a meaningful use objective for public health serves as a catalyst to accelerate its adoption. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have launched the “Medicare and Medicaid Programs: Electronic Health Records Incentive Program” to provide incentive payments to Eligible Professionals (EPs), Eligible Hospitals (EHs) and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) participating in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, that adopt and successfully demonstrate meaningful use of certified Electronic Health Records (EHR) technology.

Stage 1 meaningful use:

• Objective: Capability to submit electronic data on reportable (as required by state or local law) lab results to PH agencies and actual submission in accordance with applicable law and practice.
• Measure: Performed at least one test of EHR’s technology’s capacity to provide results electronic submission of reportable lab results to public health agencies and follow–up submission if the test is successful.

While the reportable lab results meaningful use objective promotes adoption by hospitals and laboratories, it does not address state challenges in receiving the data nor does it provide vendors and laboratories practical implementation guidelines for providing electronic laboratory reports to public health.

Proposed criteria for Stage 2 Meaningful Use add surveillance reporting for eligible providers, giving them the option to either send the data from their EHR or to have it sent directly from their lab.

Challenges

Large national and regional laboratories have developed advanced information technology (IT) capabilities and use standardized test codes, making ELR possible, but not all lab systems have this capability, and many smaller laboratories that are not using a laboratory information system do not have the technology necessary for ELR. Additionally, many states have reporting regulations that are not structured for electronic reporting.

ELR Web Resources

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Website; Electronic Laboratory Reporting (ELR) http://www.cdc.gov/ehrmeaningfuluse/elr.html

Orchardsoft Blog; Electronic Laboratory Reporting (ELR) – What is it anyway? http://www.orchardsoft.com/blog/?p=354

Submitted by (Yazan Jabr)