Electronic Laboratory Reporting (ELR) is the electronic transmission from laboratories to public health, of laboratory reports which identify reportable conditions. ELR has many benefits, including improved timeliness, reduction of manual data entry errors, and reports that are more complete. Electronic Laboratory Reporting has been promoted as a public health priority for the past several years and its inclusion as a MU2 objective for public health has served as a catalyst to accelerate its adoption.

In Colorado, hospitals are required to complete electronic laboratory reporting (ELR), of certain reportable conditions to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE).  QHN has recently established a direct interface with CDPHE that helps automate this reporting process for hospital labs with connectivity to QHN.

"Electronic lab reporting through HIE is a win-win situation for hospitals and public health," said Andrew Horvath, MPH, Electronic Laboratory Reporting Coordinator at CDPHE. "We appreciate our partnership with QHN. Our goals are to make the process of transmitting the needed clinical data as efficient and easy as possible to help improve health outcomes for all Coloradans." 

The QHN partnership with CDPHE for ELR has significant public health implications including a unique opportunity to collaboratively work for population health improvement and to advance the cooperation between clinical and public healthcare at the local and state level. The partnership supports improvements in patient-centric preventive care and bi-directional communication with clinical care providers.

 Read more...

The new QHN platform solution has a modern, easy to use, look and feel with many new user friendly features that will facilitate and enhance providers' workflow.  In order to assist QHN participants transition to the new platform the QHN Clinical Account managers are scheduling meetings with each connected organization, practice and provider to establish an individualized "road map" assessment to facilitate the platform change. Part of this assessment involves identifying the users training and educational needs. 

With the vast western Colorado geographical area QHN serves - almost 40,000 square miles - the need to serve our customers using various educational modalities is unmistakable. The Clinical team is in the process of planning regional "super user" demos, webinars and on-site training activities. As these educational opportunities are scheduled they will be posted on the QHN Event Calendar and participants will have the opportunity to view short instructional videos from our web site.