One of the biggest issues I continue to hear about from my prospects is how they manage orders inside of their EHR. There are many scenarios that result in different and difficult workflows for orders inside of the EHR. I am going to highlight a few below and show how Extract Systems can resolve these complicated workflows.
Scenario 1: Order placed at health system; result completed at hospital.
This is the easiest of the order workflows. The order is created in the EHR and the hospital’s laboratory completes the order. The laboratory result closes the order automatically and notifies the provider that the order is completed for provider review. This allows for discrete data results and the document to be populated into the EHR so providers have access to data for patient trending, population health, etc. However, this is the least likely of the four scenarios we are going to discuss.
Scenario 2: Order placed at hospital; patient leaves the health system to complete laboratory order, and the result is completed from interfaced 3rd party laboratory.
The order is created in the EHR and patient goes to a 3rd party laboratory to complete the test. This “usually” closes the order automatically and notifies the provider that the order is completed for the provider review. It also allows for providers to use the discrete data for patient trending and population health. The problem is that it requires health systems to build and maintain 3rd party laboratory interfaces. I often hear from health systems how hard and expensive it is to build and then manage these interfaces so that they work properly.
Scenario 3: Order placed at hospital; patient leaves the health system to complete laboratory order, and the result comes from non-interfaced 3rd party laboratory.
Now is where you start to face tremendous problems of how you manage orders. If you are a health system that wants the discrete data off those laboratory results, you will need to manually enter in the data, match to the order, result the order, and notify the provider. If you are health system that does NOT enter in the discrete data, it is usually because this process is labor and time intensive. Even if you don’t enter in the discrete data, you still need to match to the order, result the order, and notify the provider, which is still a time-consuming process. Extract Systems’ HealthyData Platform can alleviate most of this work in a process I’ll discuss after these scenarios.
Scenario 4: No order was placed at the health system, but an order level document arrives to the health system and an order needs to be created (unsolicited orders, orders on the fly), resulted,
The unsolicited order workflow creates additional stress on your health systems. Many of our health systems want to create orders, result, and notify providers of these documents but this is a difficult ask. Obviously, getting the discrete data from these unsolicited orders adds even more work. With Extract Systems you could not only create an unsolicited order but also abstract the discrete data all from one screen without ever even going into your EHR, saving thousands of hours of work. The value of this discrete data is invaluable but often seems unattainable with the workflow constraints. This isn’t the case with Extract.
I recently had the opportunity to watch one of our health systems outline the number of steps it takes to enter in discrete data on non-interfaced labs and create unsolicited orders. It was a 16-step process that could take up to 20 minutes on a complex multi-order laboratory result. This system values data for their providers. Extract Systems’ HIM and Laboratory solutions are now automating almost every step.
*If results were previously received by Extract
If you are a health system that manages orders in your EHR, using a solution like Extract Systems is a no brainer. We work with the top health systems in the country, are EHR agnostic, and easy to implement. The results of using our HealthyData Platform will give a complete data picture of your patients, higher provider satisfaction, and labor/time savings in your HIM/Lab departments. Please reach out to Extract so we can provide a demonstration of our product, it will appeal to every level of your health systems (HIM, Laboratory, CMIO, CIO, CFO).
About the Author: Josh Nail
Josh is the Regional Business Development Manager at Extract with more than 18 years of experience in the healthcare marketplace. His healthcare background includes Revenue Cycle software solutions, HIM software solutions and EHR solutions. When not helping Health Systems improve patient care, increase provider satisfaction while delivering a return on investment you can find him Fly-fishing, Skiing, or playing Golf.