Benefits of Vendor-neutral Communications in Clinical Laboratories

Vendor neutrality is a business design approach that seeks to ensure broad compatibility and interoperability of products and technologies. The model encompasses standardization, non-proprietary design principles and unbiased business practices.

In a business context, vendor neutrality translates into making decisions pragmatically in terms of using the best technology options, rather than favoring one vendor over another. 

Lab data makes up the largest percentage of a patient’s health record. Numerous studies have shown that the elimination of duplicate lab procedures will lower costs and improve efficiency. This can only be accomplished by a vendor-neutral communication tool that will facilitate the timely and secure exchange of lab orders and results between clinical laboratories and healthcare providers’ EMRs.

Reimbursement cuts and low profit margins are forcing hospital based and independent labs to be searching for opportunities that increase referrals as well as operational efficiencies. With laboratory data making up nearly 70 percent of the clinically relevant information within an EHR, the electronic exchange of requisitions and results is a necessity. Still, interoperability between laboratory systems and provider EMR’s falls short due to integration costs and many other reasons.

Today, using the right technology, referring physicians can easily send orders to clinical labs and receive their reports back to their offices electronically — without dependence on faxing or the dreaded paper shuffle.

Connectivity technology solutions for clinical laboratories should add value to their relationship with the referring office whether or not a referring office has an EMR. If they do have an EMR, physicians should be able to choose between a very low-cost EMR integration solution and no-cost integration solution which does not require the office to sign into a web portal for every result.  These solutions should allow clinical labs to electronically receive orders and deliver results to referring physicians’ EMRs.   Research shows that portals are under-utilized by providers since they require providers to work outside of their EMR with yet another login. 

Vendor-neutral communication tools like those offered by DigitalOne Reports can that facilitate the timely and secure exchange of lab orders and results between clinical laboratories and healthcare providers’ EMRs in a very cost-efficient manner.