AHA Strategic Partnership:
Lab Interoperability Cooperative
A catalyst for interoperability, our goal is to help hospital labs become meaningful users of certified Electronic Health Record (EHR) technologies for the submission of electronic data on reportable laboratory results to public health agencies.
While technical standards exist to enable the secure, electronic exchange of lab results, the implementation and use of these standards by the commercial labs, hospitals and providers has been limited for public health reporting. By engaging hospital labs, which handle the majority of lab tests in the United States, the cooperative not only represents a unique opportunity to advance lab interoperability with public health agencies, but with the nation’s health care system overall.
The Laboratory Interoperability Cooperative (LIC) is supporting hospital efforts in electronic lab reporting (ELR). The LIC team of terminology and transport experts from the College of American Pathologists, Surescripts and American Hospital Association have created education, tools and resources for hospital teams working to meet the meaningful use requirements for ELR.
By October (’13), your Lab and IT teams need to be prepared for ongoing transmission of public health reportables. To help you respond to the challenge, LIC offers both full-day electronic lab reporting (ELR) workshops and an abridged virtual best practice series. Covering both Terminology (LOINC©, SNOMED CT©) best practices and Connectivity-Transport resources, our grant-funded services are free to hospital staff and dates are available in select cities nation-wide and online thru June.
Pre-registration for all sessions is required visit the LIC web site for details.
NOTE: All sessions are free and intended for Hospital employees only. As a federally-funded grant, our obligation is to track participation in our efforts – this requires each facility to acknowledge their participation and understand our intent to help you progress to Electronic Laboratory Reporting to your local public health jurisdiction. Learn more about LIC participant tracking here.
To date, the LIC team has more than 825 hospital laboratories in 44 states enrolled and participating in the LIC services. The focus of the remaining months is educating hospital Lab and IT staff on the process and skills needed to transition their current 'reportable' menu to LOINC, a major hurdle in facilitating real-time electronic data exchange of reportable lab results with public health agencies.
Hospitals still needing assistance can participate in LIC services through online education resources that include access to the LIC ELR Best Practice Guide materials and a complete library of presentations and demonstration videos.