When implementing an EMR you are very likely to also implement an EMR interface. The most common type of EMR interface is with your lab, but you might also have an interface with radiology, pharmacy, vital machines, ekg machines, spirometry machines, etc. The fact is that you are very likely to run into an interface in the process of implementing an EHR.

Interfaces with your EMR software are your very best friends, but also can be incredibly frustrating. Sounds a lot like my children. Here’s a short list of ways that EMR interfaces are like kids:

• Some people just know they want one, but others debate getting one all together. In the end, most people end up with one.
• They often will cost to implement and also cost (time if nothing else) to maintain.
• A lot of time is spent at the beginning taking care of the interface and making sure that it’s working properly.
• Most people love them and can’t imagine life without them.
• When they work your life is wonderful, when they don’t you wonder why you got one in the first place.
• They cause you serious headaches and usually those headaches happen at the very worst times.

Ok, so it’s not a perfect analogy, but I think this feeling about interfaces is shared by most people involved in them.  All of this said, I think our interface with our lab is one of the best reasons to use an EMR.  It’s so seamless and beautiful to see the orders get sent and the results returned with the lab signed off electronically.

My guess is that many of you are using an HL7 interface between your EMR and your lab. How does your EMR handle the signing of lab results?

We worked for an entire year testing, making requests, testing, more requests and more testing before we were able to launch an interface between our lab and EMR, but it’s been one of the best things we’ve done. The reason it took so long is the topic of another post, but it was for good reason.

One of the best advantages to a lab interface with your EMR is that you don’t have to worry about what to do with all those paper labs that you’ve signed. Inevitably all those signed paper labs will have to be scanned and attached to a patient in your EMR.

Really, that’s why a lab interface is so much better. The interface inserts the lab info right into your EMR so you don’t have to worry about:
1. Losing your lab results (before or after you sign it)
2. No need to scan your signed lab results into your EMR
3. You can run really cool reports on the data from those labs in your EMR (ie. blood sugar change over time)
4. Most EMR will notify you that there are lab results to read, so there’s no more waiting for the paper to somehow make it to you

In our EMR, a lab result gets easily signed off with the click of a check mark. Actually our labs our grouped into batches according to labs that were ordered at the same time. This makes it so all our lab results appear on one nice lab report as opposed to one lab report per lab. All doctors have to do is highlight all the labs and click “Mark as Read” and that whole batch of lab results are signed electronically in the EMR.

Of course, many of you will probably ask how we handle abnormal results. Well, I guess you’ll just have to wait to learn about that.