Today at MGMA, Fujitsu together with Osmosyz announced a new scanner that supports the relatively new CDA “Unstructured Document” HL7 standard at MGMA 2011. I must admit that the press release is a little intense. However, I find what they’re doing with a hardware product to support HIE is quite interesting.

I don’t want the title of this post to be misleading. While certainly HIE has generally become synonymous with some large health information exchange entity, in this case I’m describing a hardware device (a smart scanner if you will) that acts as a small health information exchange. Basically, it’s more along the lines of Direct Project as opposed to NHIN. Although, I imagine that it could send the documents to some larger health information exchange if someone wanted to do so.

The larger application I see of this technology is as a replacement for the fax machine. In some ways, it’s like a second generation fax machine. The major differentiation I see between a document sent using the CDA “Unstructured Document” HL7 standard and a fax is all the meta data that comes with the CDA document.

The fax or scanning workflow for most EHR software consists of receiving faxed documents or scanning documents into what amounts to basically a bucket of all the scanned documents. Then, it’s up to the user to go in and sort through all the various faxes that have been received or documents that have been scanned. At this point, the user can assign the document to a patient in the EHR. You can imagine the challenges that this can pose. I wonder how many documents scanned or faxed into an EHR have been assigned to the wrong patient accidentally.

That’s what makes this new Fujitsu scanner quite interesting. If it’s receiving the document from an outside source, it will come with the meta information for the document as part of the CDA standard. That can then be leveraged to more quickly assign that document to the patient. Not to mention, then all of that CDA information is available for other uses within the EHR.

For inside documents that are scanned in through the Fujitsu device you can actually assign the document to a patient on the scanner itself. That’s right, you can identify which patient a scanned document belongs to while you’re holding the document in your hand. A much better way to ensure that the document you scanned gets attached to the right patient in your EHR.

I’m just touching on a few of the features of what’s possible with this new Smart Scanner from Fujitsu and smart documents. You can do other things on the scanner like dividing document scans between multiple patients.

Meaningful Use Monday Angle
Of course, as most of you know, on Monday we usually do our regular Meaningful Use Monday series. Turns out that the CDA Clinical Document standard that I discuss above is being adopted by ONC as part of meaningful use. I’ll be interested to see how this plays out over time, but don’t be surprised if EHR software has to support this standard in the future.

What I find more intriguing is that the above scanner could be used by someone who doesn’t have an EHR, but wants to exchange patient information. I still think that the long term solution to interoperability of patient information has got to come from connections with EHR software. However, this does illustrate that technology solutions can and will be created to exchange health information. In fact, some combination of these solutions could be a way to meet some of the meaningful use requirements around exchange of health information. You still can’t get the EHR stimulus money without an EHR, but technologies like this could help you achieve meaningful use.

I’ll keep an eye on how this technology progresses. I wonder how many EHR vendors will integrate with this type of technology. Whether we like it or not, documents are going to be a major part of healthcare for the foreseeable future. We’ll see if smart documents and smart scanners are an intermediate step to the health information exchange nirvana (whatever that might be).

Patient Doctor Relationship
It seems like this topic keeps coming up in my online and social media reading. Basically, the discussion usually centers around the role the patient plays in healthcare. Many people like to discuss what has been called the ePatient. I instead want to talk about the motivations of patients and their ability to influence the healthcare system.

Patients in healthcare are unlike “customers” in many other industries. I can’t think of a single patient that wants to go and see a doctor. Ok, maybe they like the doctor and they want to get whatever’s ailing them fixed, but to a person I’m sure we’d say that going to the doctor is the last place we want to be. It’s not like going shopping for a new pair of shoes. There’s nothing you get to take home from the doctor. Well, at least nothing that you really want to take home.

Plus, healthcare is an interesting thing, because often it’s not clear if you should go to the doctor or not. If my A/C is broken, then it’s quite clear that I need to call an A/C repairman. Seeing a doctor is quite different since it’s a fine line between when you need to go and see the doctor versus when your body will heal on its own. I think we’ve all hated the doctor visit where they check you out and basically say there’s nothing they can do for you. Well, other than send you the bill for your visit. I guess that’s the cost of the peace of mind that you get from the visit (I know I’ve done that with my kids a few times).

Please don’t take this as me knocking doctors or the healthcare profession. They provide an absolutely essential and critical role in our lives. Without great doctors many of us wouldn’t be here today. My point in this post is that the patient doctor relationship is quite different than the customer business relationship that we’re use to seeing.

Online Patient Portals
Take for example the online patient portal. Many people love to go on Amazon.com (or insert your preferred shopping site) and browse through all the various things they could buy. We all know people who spend hours shopping. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that they wanted to spend hours browsing through their patient portal. You know, someone who just couldn’t wait to see what great healthcare services their doctor could provide them.

The only partial exception to the above reasoning is possibly the chronic patient. If I’m a diabetic patient, then I am going to have an ongoing dialogue with my care provider and the services they provide. I’m going to be interested in monitoring and tracking my care in collaboration with the treatments that my doctor provides.

Is there a reason why we don’t want this kind of interaction for our general healthcare?

Regular Online Interaction with Doctors
Why shouldn’t I go online on a regular basis so that my doctor can assist me in total wellness even when I’m a healthy patient? The difference here of course lies in doctors treating symptoms and illness as opposed to a very different form of care: wellness. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve seen any doctors who treat healthy patients. Sure, some doctors do provide some pro-active wellness information during a sick visit to the doctor. Regular physicals are the closest we come to doctors treating healthy patients, but how many health people get those? It feels counter intuitive that we would go and see a doctor when we’re healthy or appear to be healthy. However, maybe that’s the shift our healthcare system needs.

Reimbursement Model Challenge
One real challenge with what I just described is the reimbursement model we have in healthcare. We’ve incentivized treatment of sickness and illness. We haven’t (yet?) incentivized treatment of healthy patients and promotion of wellness. This sounds a bit like the ACO discussion that’s become so popular these days. I’ll be interested to see how these incentives play out. Word on the street is the train has left the building and reimbursement is going to be tied to healthcare outcomes in the future.

Healthy Patient Motivation
Unfortunately, another major challenge I see is that healthy patients aren’t really motivated by wellness initiatives. I’m sure that there are people that understand this phenomenon a lot better than I. Although, I think it’s abundantly illustrated when you talk to someone who’s getting older and starting to lose their health.

It seems particularly poignant for highly successful people that start to get older. How many times have we heard during Oprah or a Barbara Walters interview someone talk about being willing to give up all their riches and fame to just have their health (and they often throw family in there too)? All the time! The problem is that it takes old age or some other health incident for people to make healthy living and wellness an important part of their life. Which begs the question of whether even a change in the reimbursement model for healthcare will get unmotivated people to visit their doctors and be “treated” even when they’re a healthy patient.

Gamification of Healthcare
One idea that I find incredibly intriguing is the idea of gamification of healthcare and wellness. The basic concept behind gamification is to create incentives for people to do the behaviors you want them to do. I believe Foursquare was one of the first applications to do this. They would give you electronic badges and crown you as mayor as you did certain things on their mobile app. It was (and still is) amazing to see what people will do for a little electronic badge and the electronic title of mayor (Turns out this works in the offline world as well. There’s a reason boy scouts give out badges, beads and pins.). The question is how can we apply rewards systems to incentivize healthy behavior and wellness?

To be completely honest, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone crack the gamification code in healthcare. Although, I think the concept is just beginning. I predict in the next couple years that we’re going to see some amazing mobile and web applications that really drastically impact our motivation to healthy living.

The closest I’ve seen so far has been something like the Nike+ device and website. It’s a simple device that tracks your running habits either in a watch, iPod or even in your shoe. Then, that device uploads your running data to a website where you can create and track your running progress. It also provides a social experience, but that’s a topic for another day.

I actually find these tracking device/website combinations (see the FitBit and DigiFit as other examples) to be some of the most interesting things happening when it comes to pro active treating of healthy patients. A while back I predicted a whole plethora of medical tracking devices are going to hit the market. This is happening and will continue for many years to come. I heard one guy interviewed who talked about one day (many years from now) having little mini processors attached to every nerve or blood cell in our body. Ok, that’s kind of creepy to think about, but personal monitoring of our body is a burgeoning field in healthcare.

Crunching All the Personal Healthcare Device Data
The question once we’re monitoring all of these various vital signs and health information is what are we going to do with that information. Is it reasonable to think that we’ll be able to use computers to crunch through all the data and provide a self service analysis of all the data collected? Yes, Watson did some amazing things on Jeopardy, but I think we’re far away from the day when this type of self service crunching of all the medical data we collect will be possible.

Yes, that means we’re still going to need doctors and other healthcare professionals who help us analyze the data that we’re collecting and dealing with the health issues that are related to that data. In fact, I predict a whole new breed of doctor will come together that will be specialized at analyzing this data and treating even the healthy patients.

Future Healthy Patient Doctor Relationship
This all comes full circle when you go back to the start of this discussion: the doctor patient relationship. How are doctors going to see all this health information we’re collecting? Where are we going to have these healthy patient interactions with doctors? I predict that it will be through patient portals that are connected to a physician’s EHR.

I and every blogger I’ve ever known has been a stats junkie. We’re addicted to checking our stats. There’s no reason we wouldn’t be just as addicted to checking our health stats on a patient portal. The problem is that the patient portals I’ve seen aren’t there yet. Plus, most doctors aren’t yet ready for this type of healthy patient interaction around such a large set of data. Although, I predict we’ll get there and it will change the doctor patient relationship forever.

I live in Chicago, a highly competitive healthcare market with some world-class medical schools (Northwestern, University of Chicago, Loyola, Rush) and a pretty decent record of EMR adoption. At least four major institutions/health systems run similar Epic EMRs: University of Chicago Medical Center, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Rush University Medical Center and, in the northern suburbs, NorthShore University HealthSystem (formerly Evanston-Northwestern Healthcare).

Three NorthShore hospitals–Evanston Hospital, Glenbrook Hospital and Highland Park Hospital–were among the first in the country to reach Stage 7 on the HIMSS Analytics EMR Adoption Model.(NorthShore’s Skokie Hospital since has reached Stage 7). Several others, notably Rush, Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in northwest suburban Park Ridge, Mercy Hospital & Medical Center and  Swedish Covenant Hospital, have gotten to Stage 6.

But there’s been very little effort to interconnect these institutions and affiliated physician practices. Even during the RHIO heyday of 2004-07, I don’t recall much interoperability talk in the Chicago area. (In fact, one family physician, Dr. Stasia Kahn, in far west suburban St. Charles, got so frustrated that she formed her own group to promote EMR adoption and health information exchange, Northern Illinois Physicians for Connectivity. I had heard talk for a while of some south suburban hospitals joining in an HIE with counterparts across the state line in Northwest Indiana since Illinois was moving too slowly.)

All of that non-action at the state and regional levels happened under the not-so-watchful eye of one Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who apparently was more preoccupied with his own vanity and “giving healthcare to kids” (while also allegedly trying to blackmail the CEO of Children’s Memorial Hospital into donating to his campaign fund and also slowing Medicaid payments to pay for his All Kids program) than in, you know, actually improving healthcare for everyone by promoting HIE.

In February 2009, shortly after Blagojevich was removed from office and a couple weeks before the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act became law, new Gov. Pat Quinn signed a law allocating $3 million to the state’s Department of Healthcare and Family Services for HIE planning. That laid the groundwork for this week’s widely publicized announcement that the not-for-profit Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council had chosen technology from Microsoft, Computer Sciences Corp. and HealthUnity to build what could be the largest big-city HIE in the country, potentially serving 9.4 million people in nine Illinois counties and small parts of Indiana and Wisconsin.

I bring all of this up because I met yesterday with executives from the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council, a 76-year-old coalition of healthcare organizations in and around the city. It just so happened that the 2011 Microsoft Connected Health Conference was in town this week, so it was the perfect time and location for Microsoft to drop the news. According to MCHC Vice President Mary Ann Kelly, more than 70 percent of the council’s 150-some members have made a commitment to participate, and they seem to have a plan to make the HIE effort sustainable.

The exchange will operate on a subscription model, with the vendors taking on some of the risk, Kelly said. “The subscription fee will be based on the benefit each member derives,” Kelly explained.

Initially, the exchange will involve 22 hospitals in nine organizations, said Teresa Jacobsen, the council’s HIE director. “We want to get one or two use cases running first,” she said. They will start by linking emergency departments to exchange clinical summaries and for syndromic surveillance, according to Jacobsen. Once that’s going, the HIE plans on adding medication and allergy lists, diagnostic testing results and Continuity of Care Document reports, as well as additional elements for public health, including immunization records.

It all sounds great, and it’s a good idea for them to start slowly, but I wonder when and if smaller physician practices will get involved. My own physician has had an EMR for a while, but not every doctor in the practice uses it. (The four-physician practice recently upgraded to the Meaningful Use Edition of Sage Intergy and has started the 90-day clock for qualifying for Stage 1 Medicare incentives this year, but there’s essentially zero interoperability with other healthcare entities, unless you consider faxing records to others straight from a computer interoperability. I sure don’t.)

My guess is that scenarios like this are playing out all over the country. I wish them luck, but I’m not counting on nationwide interoperability for many years. For one thing, the federally funded, state-chartered Illinois HIE Authority held its very first organizational meeting Wednesday afternoon. “That’s the biggest wild card we don’t know,” MCHC CFO Dan Yunker said.

It’s key to getting payers—particularly Illinois Medicaid—on board with HIE and linking metropolitan exchange networks across the state and beyond. “Our hospitals in Chicago are responsible for the snowbirds who are in Naples (Florida),” Yunker noted. They’re also responsible for patients who come from places like Rockford, Springfield, Champaign, Carbondale and the Quad Cities for certain specialized services only available in the big city.

Yeah, this interoperability thing isn’t so easy.

While some might consider the following commentary an ad for Quest Diagnostic’s Care360 EHR, it’s not. I don’t even have them as an advertiser. Plus, you could easily submit a number of other companies name in the place of Quest. However, the following were some thoughts I had after talking with the people behind Care360 EHR at Quest.

First, let me clarify some name issues so we’re all on the same page. Quest Diagnostics is the company. It’s publicly traded on the NYSE with the ticker DGX. Most of you will know about Quest since they’re one of the leading lab companies in the US. MedPlus is the subsidiary within Quest that covers the healthcare IT portion of the company including their EMR software. Care360 is the name of their SaaS EHR software which they sell. Although, Care360 is also used to provide lab results amongst other functions as well.

Now why am I talking about Care360 and Quest? I find it completely fascinating that a company like Quest is part of the EHR landscape. Certainly we have plenty of large and even many publicly traded companies that already provide an EHR, but I see some potential differences between Quest and many of these companies.

One of the biggest fears that doctors have when selecting an EHR company is that they’re afraid of how long that company will be around. Even in the cases of very large companies, there’s still the fear that the large EHR company might get bought out or merged into another company and the EHR software will be left on life support (see Misys being bought by Allscripts for an example). This is a reasonable fear that should be considered during the EMR selection process.

I believe that Quest and Care360 EHR has a distinct advantage in this regard. Quest is not likely to go out of business or even sell off their EHR software to another company. In fact, their Care360 EHR is so tightly coupled with the rest of Quest’s lab services, I’m not sure it would even be possible for Quest to sell off their EHR software if they wanted to do it.

That’s not to say that something couldn’t happen to Care360 that would make Quest change their direction. They could essentially “sell” their users to another EHR vendor through some sort of referral process or they could just choose to shutdown that division of the company because it wasn’t profitable. However, you can be quite sure that they’ll be interested in the transition process. At least if you’re a Quest lab customer. They’re not going to want to lose lab customers because they decided to stop doing EHR.

This is only one factor related to selection of an EMR (see my free EMR selection e-Book for more). There should be some discussion related to how tied you are to Quest if you use their EHR. For example, I can’t remember if Care360 has an interface with LabCorp or not. You might even ask yourself if a Lab company can make great EHR software. They also don’t have a practice management system, but said they’d consider creating one in the future.

It’s like most things in life. There’s pros and cons to everything. You could certainly argue some of the other benefits of going with Quest and Care360 EHR. For example, Quest’s been doing the SaaS based model with their Care360 lab results for a while on a very large scale. They have some expertise in that regard which they can carry over into their EHR product.

Now the question I’m interested in finding out is, what is Labcorp’s approach to EHR?

There’s a pretty fierce battle going on right now between all the various stakeholders interested in exchanging patient data. The stakeholders range from very large companies to government initiatives to startup companies. One of the major problems that I see is that it’s not completely clear which model of patient data exchange will win out. In fact, let’s not be surprised if a number of different options take hold.

With this said, I found it interesting that my favorite open source healthcare IT advocate, Fred Trotter, has chosen to get behind the Direct Project. In Fred’s post describing the challenges with the IHE-protocol HIE model approach is flawed and that the direct exchange of healthcare information is the way to go. In fact, he provides the following two illustrations in his post to show the difference:

HIE Model (click on the image to see it full size)

Direct Model (click on the image to see it full size)

Fred then offers this incredibly interesting conclusion:

At every level, organizations are deciding whether to invest in Direct or IHE-based exchange. At this point, I believe the only viable option is for a local exchange to either support Direct only, or both Direct and IHE. IHE is simply going to be too heavy weight for early adoption. Eventually, IHE may become dominate but for now Direct is much simpler, and puts the patient right in the center of everything. If you are a policy maker, you should be asking anyone involved with an HIE process to detail what their Direct-strategy is. If any effort is ignoring Direct and going with IHE-only I would lay odds that they will be broke and defunct before the decade is out.

Moreover, an IHE-only strategy is going to exclude direct participation from patients at this stage. If you care about patient empowerment, I recommend that you advocate for the Direct project at every level, including in your local HIE and REC.

Lots to consider with this complex challenge.

I guess you could say that the direct model is the patient centric model. Although, one could easily argue that the direct model doesn’t have the patient as the center of the model, but instead is a PHR centric model. So, the direct model will be a patient centered model only as much as the PHR software allows the patient to be involved.

Thus, it makes since why Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health are heavily involved in the Direct Project. Of course, they want to be involved in a project that puts them at the center of the communication.

The real question even with the direct model is what incentive do the various PHR vendors have to make this interaction happen? What will be the “cost” that PHR vendors pass on to consumers and/or doctors that use the PHR centric model? Basically, what’s the business model of the PHR vendors?

Unless we can find a PHR centric business model that works for the PHR vendor while still empowering the patient, even the direct model will fail or have adverse outcomes.

In response to my previous post about possibly creating an EMR pricing comparison website, I got a really interesting set of comments from a CPA who’s been assisting their clients in their EMR selection process. You might laugh at the idea of a CPA participating in the EMR selection process. Interestingly, the CPA that I use has also been asked by their clients about the EMR stimulus money and so they were grateful they could ask me some questions.

This aside, I found this person’s comments interesting. I think they also illustrate some of the challenges in EMR pricing and some of the thirst for EMR pricing also. I removed some identifying information and some other comments about EMR and HIPAA. Otherwise, the comments are in tact.

I have been pondering trying to do some sort of price comparison myself, and you’re right, they all differ so it’s tough to just do one basic comparison chart. I’ve seen already how some have things all bundled (ie.Athena, and others do it in separate modules can add on – ie. Greenway)

I have featured remote demo’s for clients to listen/view through our firm so they can avoid the vendor pressure… I thought I would try to get info on others for comparison purposes, but in keeping with the theme… it is just not that easy.

There are a few challenging items for comparison purposes, one of them being support and related costs.
The support/training is many times where the wheels fall off the well-intentioned EMR wagons.
You just don’t seem to get an answer or know the true support/training costs until you have already tied the knot with your new EMR system. If you could get more comparative info on that aspect, that would be very helpful – or better yet, come up with an EMR Pre-Nup.

Another toughy is the interfacing costs
From what I hear a [EMR Vendor] system may charge $30k to interface with another EMR vendor.
The vendors call that “not playing nicely”.
So tack on another layer of subjective complexity to your pricing project.

And yet another cost factor I’ve noticed is what EMR system an affiliated hospital is getting preferred pricing on. There is a hospital by us in an arrangement with [EMR Vendor], and of course advising the outside practice physicians to use the same. I am not to thrilled with this idea, I think there are better products that are not spread so thin in so many markets.

I mention the patient portal separately below as some of my clients don’t seem quite ready for that yet.
They view it as another task and feel could attack it once get the EMR running smoothly.
I know they need it for MU [Stage 1 doesn't require this, but future stages probably will], but they seem to want that a little later than sooner.

In any case, I think some possible approaches for a comparative pricing schematic would be to have different scenarios:
a) 1-5 Docs & Midlevel providers /Web Hosted/ EMR only/ PM Interface/ No Patient Portal
b) 1-5 Docs & Midlevel providers /Web Hosted/ EMR only/ PM Interface/ With Patient Portal
c) 1-5 Docs & Midlevel providers /Web Hosted/ EMR & PM Bundled/ No Patient Portal
d) 1-5 Docs & Midlevel providers /Web Hosted/ EMR & PM Bundled/ With Patient Portal
e) 1-5 Docs & Midlevel providers /Web Hosted/ EMR & PM Bundled/ With Revenue Cycle Mgt/ With Patient Portal

My very first meeting with a vendor at HIMSS was with NoMoreClipboard. I’d known of them for quite a while, but never really took them seriously before. After meeting with them, I was really impressed with what they’re trying to do in the PHR space. I was particularly interested in them since they have a PHR implementation in a university health center, but they go well beyond that.

In fact, I think the greatest potential for NoMoreClipboard is likely in partnerships with smart EMR vendors that want to integrate with a great PHR rather than putting up some half baked piece of junk software that they call a PHR. Yes, if you’re an EMR vendor you likely know what I’m talking about. It’s really hard to focus on creating a great EMR software and a great PHR software. Oh yes, and you have to do a Practice Management system too. It’s no wonder that PHR often gets set to the side.

That’s why it makes so much sense for smart EMR vendors to become channel partners with someone like NoMoreClipboard. Then, they can offer their users a PHR without having to build all of the features in house. Plus, NoMoreClipboard seems to have a nice set of API’s available so it almost seems like it is your PHR and not a third party PHR.

Sure, this has been around for a while, but I think that it’s taken a while for NoMoreClipboard to really build out the tools and features for doing this type of integration. The other key is that integrating with a PHR like NoMoreClipboard can also satisfy a number of the Meaningful Use requirements if it’s done right.

Of course, I had to also ask them what their take was on their “competitors” Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault. They are the 2 behemoths in the PHR space and so the question was certainly no surprise. What was interesting was NoMoreClipboard’s response to competition. They’ve basically decided to partner with them and integrate NoMoreClipboard with Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault. Yep, that’s right. You can import and export between the three PHR systems. That’s pretty unique if I do say so myself.

Now I’m not saying that NoMoreClipboard is perfect. There’s plenty they still have to work on, but I was impressed how far they’ve come since I last looked at them.

I’d love to here what other EMR vendors are doing as far as providing their users the PHR capability. Are you building your own or integrating with some other PHR vendor?

Another interesting story from EMRUpdate talking about how one EMR vendor, Medtuity EMR, took 3 locations and tied their EMRs together. However, they didn’t just do one centralized database accessed from each location. Instead, they essentially built patient data interoperability between the 3 locations. Check it out:

We just linked 3 sites in October. The docs described what they wanted, including the speed of a separate SQL Server in each facility. They also had a billing office (as the center or hub). They previously used a single server with Remote Desktop as the means of communicating with a central server. They were not entirely happy with that arrangement and so wanted to embark on a SQL Server in each facility. Additionally, they did not want all encounters synched to all facilities daily. Instead, the 3 offices synch to the billing office once daily. Pt demographics get synched from that hub outward to all offices daily just in case a pt should visit another office.

So the underlying theme was speed– each office has its own server; pt encounters originating there are stored there + at the billing office, but pt demographics are synched to the hub and from there back to all 3 facilities. It’s all automated. If a pt visits a different facility than the original, the demographics are already at that alternate site and so the additional encounters can be synch with a button press to insure contemporaneous info.

What they did not want is to have all encounters stored at each site because there is not enough cross visiting among docs to warrant it, but they did want to be able to transfer encounters quickly when the need arose.

Certainly, this problem is much easier since all 3 locations used the same EMR software. However, it seems like there’s something that can be learned from this story in regards to broader interoperability of EMR software.

Healthcare data sharing is one of the hottest topics when talking about the importance of EMR software. Some people call it healthcare data portability. One of the problems I have with these discussions is that everyone has different goals for why they want to share the information. Here’s a partial list of reasons people may want to share healthcare data between various EMR respositories (in no particular order):

• Clinical data sharing for reimbursement purposes
• Quality data sharing for broader research goals
• Quality data sharing to meet ARRA requirements/reimbursement
• Data shared for continuity of care between providers

There are probably other reasons to have EMR software be able to share clinical data. However, you get the basic point. There are a lot of reasons why people want the ability to share healthcare related data from an EMR. One problem in the discussion of EMR data portability is that the conversation often gets convoluted when clear lines aren’t drawn for why the EMR data is being shared. Kind of reminds me of what it’s like to discuss EMR and not differentiate between a hospital EMR and ambulatory EMR. There are important similarities, but there are also important differences which always seem to confuse the discussion.

I’m always sad when I come across an EMR implementation that doesn’t have an interface between their EMR and their lab. I can appreciate someone having just implemented an EMR not having a lab interface. However, it should be one of the first things on your list to implement. It’s such a great compliment to your EMR software.

First thing I must suggest is that you get a bi-directional lab interface if at all possible. One way lab interfaces can work, but do take more management to make it work right.

Why Get a Lab Interface with Your EMR?
Lab interfaces are so seamless. The order is made in the EMR and it’s automatically is sent to the lab. Talk about removing a lot of the possibilities for error. In our case, we have an in house lab and so this saves a ton of time for the lab rat tech as well. No more data entry into the Lab’s LIS system. As a side note, we also use the lab order in our EMR to print out the labels for the specimen. This is an unbelievable time saver and much more accurate. Small things like this are just another hard to calculate benefit to an EMR.

The largest benefit to a lab interface is receiving the results back electronically. Compare this to receiving a paper copy of the lab results. Often this paper copy is sent to a fax machine and then the hunt begins to get that result to the right paper chart/person. The time savings here are apparent. With a lab interface, you no longer have to file the lab results in the paper chart (or scan them into your EMR). The results are automatically available in the EMR and routed to the ordering provider. They can be signed electronically and no one has to then go back and refile the chart.

What’s even more important is that with the lab interface all of those lab results are now stored in discrete values. Storing the lab results this way means that you can graph lab results over time, do studies on lab results across your patient population, and eventually may be needed to satisfy the government and insurance reporting requirements.

Cost of a Lab Interface
Many people are often surprised to find out that there’s sometimes a cost associated with implementing a lab interface. In fact, there could be multiple costs involved.

The costs depend a lot upon your EMR vendor and the lab with which you’d like to interface. Some EMR vendors will offer a lab interface for free (or part of the standard cost of the EMR) while others will charge. The same is true for labs. However, more labs are willing to offer their interface for free. Often that just requires the right negotiating skills. If you’re a large customer of that lab, then if you talk to the right people you can usually get the interface for free. Labs are easier to negotiate with since a lab interface benefits the lab as well. $5,000 seems like the standard charge (from what I’ve seen) for most interfaces. Yes, that’s possibly $5,000 to your EMR vendor and another $5,000 to your lab.