e-Labs

Sending and receiving lab requests electronically may be an important EHR-S capability your agency should consider. If your agency requests and receives a large volume of labs on behalf of your clients, then the related functionality should be reviewed with your EHR-S vendor. Currently this is likely to be a custom interface, or a web based solutions that is not yet integrated with the EHR-S.

Psychiatrists commonly request and receive laboratory test results via fax, or the patient serves as the courier. If this process can be converted to an electronic EDI transcation, or even a web based posting system, then the process can be automated.

Consider this possibility:
The doctor requests the lab on Monday, the lab runs the tests and returns the results using an EDI transaction. The EHR-S is integrated with the lab electronically and the results are automatically updated in the client's electronic records. The treatment team, including the doctor, are notified that the results are in and the can click on them to review the results. Even better yet (but not a possibility yet with the current set of Behavioral Healthcare EHR systems), the system recognizes that the results are out of the normal range (maybe the lab indicated this directly in the result transaction) and alerts the appropriate staff (and maybe also the pharmacy) to take action. Now, wouldn't that be great!

Another application will be for doctor's to electronically request and obtain historical and other relevant test results, beyond the current order.

The creation and adoption of a national standard for test requisition and results reporting is still in progress. Such a standard will help agencies reap tangible benefits early in EHR implementation and reduce costs associated with EHR-S custom interfaces between independent laboratories and EHR systems.

The use case here describes interoperability between clinical care providers’ systems (which may include electronic health records) and the laboratory systems: http://library.ahima.org/xpedio/groups/public/documents/government/bok1_036403.pdf#page%3D5&search%3D%22lab%20results%22