The Future Impact of Electronic Health Records on the LIS

By Jayashree Adkoli
TMCnet Contributor

Recently, the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was ratified. The ARRA’s Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) includes more than $19 billion in incentives for physicians to adopt electronic health record (EHR) technology. Precisely, the HITECH calls for physicians to earn up to $64,000 over five years if they "meaningfully use" an EHR.

The Electronic Health Record (EHR) belongs to the patient and allows patient input and access to care records from any and all healthcare delivery sites within his/her community. The EHR exists if the patient’s care professionals have an EMR, which can support the exchange of information with the EHR.

The electronic medical record (EMR) is used by healthcare clinicians and practitioners. It is a collection of a patient’s medical history and can keep track of all the details about the patients seen in their offices or in hospitals were they practice.

Rick Callehan, VP of sales and marketing at Princeton, NJ’s NovoPath, said that to date ARRA has favorably impacted vendors specializing in software-program development that allows for capture, archiving, retrieval, and modification of individual healthcare information. And, this act has implications for U.S. anatomic pathology (AP) and clinical pathology (CP) labs and their clients.

According to Callehan, most reference laboratories will not be eligible for the ARRA incentives related to the HITECH since many electronic medical records (EMR) vendors have not yet developed a comprehensive lab information system (LIS), which makes it incumbent on the provider applying for the financial incentive to prove that the lab information is properly managed and contained in the electronic health records (EHR).

However, many AP and CP labs have their clients insisting that the lab have the ability to receive electronic information from, as well as the capability of depositing structured data back into EHRs, according to Callehan.

Pointing-out one of the least costly alternatives, Callehan said that some AP LIS vendors can inexpensively receive electronic requisitions and transmit structured lab data back to the care provider’s computer or HER, and then validate this capability with references before investing in upgrades to the existing system.

In case an existing AP LIS system fails or could not transmit structured data via the Web, then the lab may be forced to investigate the costly development of bidirectional LIS interfaces to each of its clients’ EMRs, stated Callehan.

Another alternative recommended by Callehan is to consider the purchase of an AP LIS that is certified as an EMR module. Or, consider an AP LIS that has a client-hosted core application as well as the capability to receive and transmit results inexpensively over the Web onto the lab-client’s unattended computers.

The last day for eligible providers to begin the 365-day “window” to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs in fiscal year 2012 for incentive payments to 2015 is Oct. 1.

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