Transforming Patient Care: A Case Study on Seamless Integration of Laboratory and Pharmacy Services with Primary Care EMR Software

Overview

The client is a technology service provider in the United States specializing in medical practice management applications. Family Clinic, situated in Chicago, Illinois, is an autonomous primary care facility catering to a diverse urban community. The clinic is equipped with a team of 15 physicians, 20 nurses, and five administrative personnel and has the capacity to serve 650-700 patients on a weekly basis. It offers a range of comprehensive primary care services, encompassing routine check-ups, preventive care, vaccinations, and the management of chronic diseases.

Business challenges

The client wanted to integrate pharmacies and laboratories into their existing EMR platform. The healthcare provider faces service delays from laboratories for diagnostic test results and reports. This affected the speed of health treatment for patients, which reduced patient care and practice productivity.

The healthcare provider requested the integration of laboratories for making lab orders and tracking the status of lab orders, alerts, and reminder features to track status to avoid service delays.

The healthcare provider focuses on improving patient care, streamlining practice operations, and increasing practice revenue. Custom EMR software implementation helps practice to achieve these goals.

Thinkitive Solution

Thinkitive's business analysts and subject matter experts engaged with the client to comprehend their requirements. Following several interactions with the client, the team has solidified the requirements based on their priority.

Subsequently, the team has compiled a comprehensive Business Requirements Document and a Software Requirement Specification Document. These documents encompass detailed workflows, use cases, and prototypes.

Our services include seamless integration with various laboratory vendors such as Quest Diagnostics, LabCorp, ACL Laboratory, Access Medical Lab, and more.

Building upon the identified features, the team has successfully developed a primary care Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software. This software incorporates functionalities like e-prescription, real-time order processing, order status tracking, and electronic transmission.

Solution Highlights

1. E- Prescription

This feature allows healthcare providers to create orders for diagnostic tests and medicines electronically. It has a database that includes medicine names and details. Healthcare providers can select medicine names, number of dosages, frequency, and medication instructions. It saves time and manual entries.

-  Real-time transmission of e-prescriptions to laboratories and pharmacies.

-  Potential drug checks improve patient safety.

2. User-friendly interface to order lab test with ease

We provided an interface from where providers can order their lab prescriptions. This can be incorporated by intense data exchange using APIs, adhering to standards like HL7, mapping data to EHR fields, enhancing efficiency, reducing errors, ensuring privacy compliance, and enabling quick access to patient data for accurate care.

We provided a user-friendly interface for providers to order lab prescriptions, achieved through robust data exchange via APIs, adherence to HL7 standards, data mapping to EHR fields, streamlined workflow, error reduction, privacy compliance, and rapid access to patient data for precise care.

3. Electronic lab order processing

While implementing this feature, we have integrated a system with EHR so that healthcare providers can electronically generate and transmit lab orders directly to laboratories. It includes selecting specific tests, providing patient information, and attaching relevant clinical details within the EHR interface. Our team has integrated the system with the laboratory records system to ensure the swift transition of orders and reduce manual errors.

4. Alerts and reminders for pharmacies and laboratories

To avoid processing delays for medicine and test orders. Healthcare providers can set alerts and reminders that notify laboratories and pharmacies to complete the orders. While creating e-prescriptions, healthcare providers set the time and frequency of alerts and reminders over mail and messages to the concerned pharmacies and laboratories. It expedites order completion and the treatment process for patients.

5. Data Security and Privacy

The developed software is HIPAA(Health Information Portability and Accountability Act) compliant, which ensures the patient's medical information is secure while sharing with other healthcare providers.

6. Interoperability and Data Exchange

The implemented software seamlessly incorporates health information exchange, facilitating the sharing of medical data among diverse healthcare providers. It furnishes comprehensive medical information for patients, aiding healthcare providers in delivering high-quality treatment. Additionally, the integrated software adheres to established data exchange protocols like HL7, guaranteeing secure and efficient data sharing without any breaches.

Value Delivered

• User-friendly interface to order lab tests

  Provide a user-friendly interface where providers can easily place lab orders without making mistakes.

• Seamless/Bidirectional integration with labs

  Integration makes lab processes easy and secures data transmission.

• Auto result uploading

  Automated lab result updates make providers more complementary and reduce the lead time between treatments.

• Electronic lab order tracking and reminder

  Automated prescription reduces administrative burden and speed up the diagnostic cycle.