You may be dissatisfied with your current interface for lab test orders. Or maybe you need a new physician portal for lab orders to boost efficiency, reduce errors, and lighten your data processing workload.
Having a robust and fully functional portal for test requisition and lab results will help you improve the quality of patient care, reduce the time for making requisitions, and allow patients to view results quickly. That’s why computerized physician order entry (CPOE) is expected to have a growth rate of 6.2% between 2020 and 2027.
When you start shopping for a new lab order interface, here are some of the features to keep in mind.
1. Transparent Lab Order Status
If you make more than 20 lab test orders daily, you need to track their status. Some lab tests are simple and take a short time to complete. But others may take up to 48 hours or more to finish.
Lab test orders may also be marked as urgent for emergencies and life-threatening cases. Such tests need to be monitored easily without having to make several phone calls to the lab technicians.
Ensure that your lab ordering interface has a well-designed dashboard for tracking and sending messages about pending lab results.
2. Automated Validation of Faulty Requisitions
Unintentionally, some lab orders may contain errors. Such errors include using wrong or outdated test codes, incomplete demographic data, duplicate tests. The patient’s health insurance company may not even approve some orders.
Errors linked to insurance claims can be corrected by making contact with the insurer or pre-approval. On the other hand, coding errors can be avoided by the interface developer.
You need to ask about how an interface developer will manage lab codes while watching their demo. Old codes may be dropped and new ones introduced by the lab or by industry regulators. So your portal must be designed to accommodate fast updates that will prevent such errors.
3. Electronic Delivery of Test Results
Ideally, test results should be sent directly to the physician’s EHR. That way, no transcription errors in patient demographics will occur. The Patient ID and order ID will be used to transfer the test results to the patient’s chart.
Electronic results also have a unique benefit when doctors are ordering radiology tests. The tests can be stored in the cloud and linked to the patient’s health records. Subsequently, the physician or patient can view the records through a web interface.
Physicians also have the opportunity to use analytics software to analyze MRI scans. The analysis may serve as a decision support system for the doctor’s diagnosis.
4. Security and Privacy of Patient Information
To comply with HIPAA regulations and protect your patients, ensure that test orders and results are secure. Also, ask for the type of encryption that your software vendor is using.
The portal should have multi-factor authentication to boost security. Two-factor authentication allows you to use a one-time code sent to your phone or email inbox to access the site in addition to your username and password.
5. Upgrades and 24/7 Customer Support
The laws governing healthcare and health IT change frequently. ONC and CMS release new regulations to improve patient care.
Complying with these laws can be difficult when you need to make several upgrades to your software. That’s why you need to be sure of your vendors’ capacity to keep up with required updates.
In addition, you need to have 24-hour support for your lab test portal. Emergencies can come up at odd hours, and you need to have a direct line to your vendors’ support staff if a problem occurs.
Get a Robust Cloud-based Physician Portal for Lab Orders
At Lifepoint Informatics, we build custom lab ordering interfaces with the features listed above and many more that you may request.
Call us now at 877.522.8378 to book a free demo or contact us by email to give us all the details about your interoperability and CPOE requirements.