Have you thought of how to remove all the information processing bottlenecks between your practice and your pathology lab? You will undoubtedly love to have more accurate results on digital slides coming into your office with fast turnaround times. That’s what a well-designed pathology EMR interface can do for your healthcare organization.
This article will highlight the benefits of interoperability between your practice and a pathology laboratory. Knowing these benefits will help you understand how to choose a functional interface.
1. Improved Operational Efficiency
Without a digital link to your pathology lab, you can’t deliver efficient service to your patients. The old paper and fax-based communication won’t suffice anymore.
If you’ve already adopted EMR technology for your practice, the next step should be to create an interface with your lab’s information system. Your interface should enable you to:
- Order lab tests from the patient’s chart
- Track the status of lab tests
- Receive results directly into the patient’s electronic record
- Share the results of the test with your patient
Automation boosts your productivity and reduces the time it takes to send orders and receive results. There’s no need to wait for ten days to get test results or delay patient appointments to review late test results.
2. Reduced Manual Workload
Paper documents and faxes should no longer be the norm for recording, keeping, and sharing medical practice. However, even after installing an EHR, some clinics still need to use paper to order lab tests.
The reason for this is a lack of system integration. With a professionally designed interface, you can do away with all the handwritten or printed forms that constantly have incomplete data and errors.
Instead, the EMR electronically transfers the request to the lab without manual entry. And the labels on samples are printed from the ordering interface.
3. Better Patient-Doctor Communication
Patients now want to be kept in the know about everything concerning their health. Most patients want to understand the meaning of their diagnosis.
That means providing complete slide images obtained from your EMR-lab interface can improve patient engagement. The images help patients to understand medical terms and provide answers to their questions.
Showing graphical digital results improves your ability to communicate risk factors by highlighting areas of interest. Thus patients can make smarter decisions about lifestyle choices and improve their health condition.
4. Increased Patient Satisfaction
Patients now have access to more excellent health and medical information than ever before. Many health and fitness apps also make patients feel they can get instant access to all their health information online.
The truth is that you need to give your patients timely access to their pathology lab test results to satisfy them. If you can use digital images to provide details about a patient’s health condition, the sense of satisfaction will rise significantly.
5. More Efficient Decision Making
When a patient takes a biopsy test for pathological analysis, there’s a need for prompt decision-making. You can improve care delivery for your patients by using an interface to speed up the turnaround time for tests.
Suppose you receive test results electronically within two days instead of 2 weeks. In that case, you will be able to make a quicker decision and help prevent escalation of the patient’s medical condition.
When you share the results with patients, it’s easier for them to understand the implications of different treatment options and co-operate with the physician during treatment.
Get a Well-Designed Pathology EMR Interface for Your Practice
To develop and deploy an interface between your practice and your pathology lab, contact Lifepoint Informatics today at 877.522.8378. You can also reach us through our contact page to book a free consultation or see a demo of our EMR-lab interface products.