Reducing Communication Costs in Clinical Laboratories

Reduced reimbursements from the federal government and third-party payers have threatened the financial viability of many clinical laboratories. An increasing number of clinical labs are struggling simply to exist. Unlike many businesses, clinical labs cannot increase the charges to their clients to any significant extent when their costs increase because fees are largely dictated by the federal government and commercial insurance payers. For no other business is there the equivalent of capitation or dictation of prices by outside organizations as there is in the healthcare industry.

For these reasons, clinical laboratories must seek ways to control or lower their cost of operation. One way is to lower their communication costs through the adoption of Technology as a Service (TaaS) approach. TaaS just makes sense for today’s financially-challenged clinical labs. Laboratory results are securely delivered to centers of care without the lab having to add to head count, change or upgrade their present IT systems. TaaS connectivity solutions use the lab’s existing workflow to turn legacy systems into a more productive IT environment.

Clinical laboratories can choose between a very low-cost EMR integration solution that allows lab results to be directly delivered to any physician office EMR or, a no-cost, desktop delivery solution. Both solutions allow clinical laboratories to electronically receive orders and deliver lab reports to referring physicians’ EMRs, while meeting all HIPAA compliance requirements.

These technologies can help clinical laboratories cope with many of today’s healthcare challenges:

• Lab orders and results electronically transmitted and received within physician practices’ EMR or PM system without using cumbersome faxes or requiring practices to use web portals
• Fast, on-demand access to pathology reports 24/7
• Schedule, view, print or download reports from any location with an internet connection
• Integration with practices’ Electronic Medical Record System (EMR) or Practice Management System (PMS)
• Direct system to system link and secure HIPAA-compliant encrypted technology
• Support for a variety of EMR/PMS vendors
• Cost-effective, easy to deploy and get started quickly

Cost-effective electronic communication solutions can be critical to the financial viability of clinical laboratories. Companies, such as DigitalOne Reports, offer these connectivity options and they can be as important to the lab as providing accurate and reliable test results.