WASHINGTON – The federal Health IT Policy Committee’s information exchange workgroup learned just how difficult it’s going to be for doctors to exchange electronic lab results to qualify for federal “meaningful use” bonuses.
Physicians can earn a potential $44,000 under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), beginning Oct. 1, 2011, but they will have to show meaningful use of data, including the use of electronic laboratory results. One of the problems, the workgroup learned at its Oct. 20 meeting, is that state laws regulate the exchange of electronic laboratory results, and standards don’t exist to allow the information to flow easily between labs and physician offices.
According to experts, labs are required to pay for the exchange of data, so they build connections with larger providers first – leaving small physician practices on their own, since there aren’t enough lab results to justify the interface.
Deven McGraw, co-chairman of the workgroup investigating potential barriers to healthcare IT adoption and lab data exchange, said the hopes to strike a balance in its recommendations, creating enough structure to allow uniform data exchange and enough freedom so as to not stifle innovation.
The group was slated to deliver recommendations to the full committee by Nov. 3. It will then work on e-prescribing recommendations, McGraw said.
Laura Rosas, with the New York City Primary Care Information Project, said her organization is the largest public health project to use electronic health records. Laboratory interface is the organization’s “biggest challenge,” she said.
Kelly Cronin, director in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, said the Department of Health and Human Services is poised to make the laboratory data exchange work.
“On a strategic level and on a specific level, this will involve many different objectives on lab data, and even many quality measures, as defined to date, that are dependent on lab measures,” she said. “There are pockets of exchange in lab data, but not anywhere near where we need to have it.”
Joy Pritts, a research associate professor at Georgetown University Health Policy Institute, said varying state laws will pose a problem for electronic laboratory data exchange. In some states, labs are permitted to release test results only to the person ordering the test.
