Panel told of difficulties with lab results exchange

A task force of the federal Health IT Policy Committee heard testimony that electronic exchange of laboratory results could be a significant barrier to wide implementation of electronic health records that meet forthcoming standards for "meaningful use" of health IT systems. "While approximately one-quarter of physicians nationally have an EHR, many still receive faxed lab results that are either manually entered, or scanned into the patient record. This is a limitation of both the lab and EHR industry," Jonah Frohlich, deputy secretary of HIT for California's Health and Human Services Agency, told the committee's Information Exchange Workgroup during a public hearing last week.

According to Federal Computer Week, the large, independent lab companies--think Quest Diagnostics and Laboratory Corporation of America--have long had results reporting systems that others can interface to. Thousands of hospital labs do not follow standards for electronic results reporting, Frohlich told the panel. He said it can take three months or more, and cost $5,000 per interface to link a lab system and an EHR--"hardly the 'plug-and-play' connectivity we have come to expect from our iPhones."

Frohlich recommended that EHR systems should be required to follow national lab standards and display the results in a consistent manner.

For more on his testimony to the committee:
- take a look at this Federal Computer Week story

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