LAB INTEROPERABILITY COOPERATIVE (LIC)
Engaging and Empowering Hospital Laboratories and Public Health Agencies in Electronic Laboratory Reporting (ELR) for Meaningful Use
The LIC team co-presented with the CDC at the Public Health Informatics Conference in August 2011.
Please note that these are large files, and may require a moment or two to buffer at the beginning. If the text on the video at left is too small to read, click the full-screen icon or click HERE.
IMPACT ON PUBLIC HEALTH
A primary focus of the Lab Interoperability Cooperative is preparing hospital labs for connectivity to public health. Once the LIC goal of enabling electronic transmission is achieved, the benefits of connectivity to the hospital laboratory community and public health are significant. Initially, those benefits will be realized with resource efficiency through data consistency and improved accuracy and reporting results. However, when we look ahead to meaningful use Stage 3, the benefits expand to a national public health landscape and improving population health outcomes as a whole.
The LIC aims to support public health through —
- Aiding clinical laboratories with appropriate encoding of their public health reportable tests at the point of origin
- Facilitating receipt of electronic lab reportables by the public health agency with the appropriate granularity and quality of LOINC encoding, increasing detection and response time for diseases
- Providing capability for real time reporting of public health laboratory tests for disease surveillance
- Supporting, training and expertise are available during the grant period from the LIC
- Structuring laboratory data collection increases the completeness of reporting
- Improving the efficiency of electronic laboratory reporting
- Facilitating the implementation of standards for reporting, encoding and messaging laboratory test results.
Additional Links
HIMSS has compiled a great resource on the impact to Public Health:
Summary: Requirements for meaningful use involve specific public health initiatives. Physicians and hospitals must complete one public health objective among the following list: submitting electronic data to state immunization registries, providing syndrome surveillance data to public health agencies, or reporting lab results electronically to public health agencies. By incorporating public health into the requirements, epidemiological statistics and population health can be more accurately monitored.
Rule Summary PDF: Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Record Information and Public Health
Payment incentives are available for Medicare and Medicaid eligible providers and hospitals that purchase, implement, and meaningfully use certified EHR systems.
