I came across this thread as I’m currently trying to get an API key with LabCorp, and I just received an email that they require a contact person with my EMR vendor. I was reading about WMT at the beginning of this thread, but further down and more recently it seems like that’s not necessary. What’s actually involved in getting access to order labs and receive results to/from LabCorp? (Also, the same with Quest).
@juggernautsei Hi Sherwin do you have the details of how unsolicited lab reports are received in OpenEMR? for example a doctor is used to using paper scripts as it is faster to do (just place a patient name sticker and a few pen marks), how does OpenEMR handles results only when there is no order history? thx…
Hello @Bo_Wang
This is Harley with MI-Squared. We have worked with a lot of practices who prefer to use paper for their labs rather than undertake the whole config/ setup and fairly complex use workflows of the lab/ procedure order module.
What they end up doing is receiving the labs result electronically and saving it as a pdf, or getting it on paper and scanning it. They upload the electronic file to an appropriate folder in the patient’s Documents tree -in fact OpenEMR comes ready to do it this way by default:
The lab report can be linked to an encounter note:
https://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/HOWTO:Associate_A_Document_Attachment_To_An_Encounter
and they can make a note about the results in whichever note- making tool they want to use: Issues, Messages, a Clinical form in the encounter, whatever.
Good luck!
- HT
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Thank you @htuck for the explanations! The association of documents to an encounter comes convenient! Regarding receiving the lab results electronically would OpenEMR
- receive an HL7 file,
- extract the PDF report from the HL7 file,
- save the PDF to “Lab Report” folder for the matching patient
once 1-3 is done by OpenEMR then staff can tag the PDF report to an encounter
when there is no matching patient ID found, would OpenEMR allow manual assignment of the PDF report from HL7 message to a patient chart?
Electronic report allows a results only setup. You can import the hl7 result based on the provider setup.
As for pdf: if included in hl7 result openemr import will parse the pdf and save in the patient documents automatically.
I did a lot of the work for current electronic reports. When I last used for certification reasons import would create patient and attach order to new patient and encounter.
If there are no orders to match the returned results then openemr will create a new encounter for the order and so on.
I got out of supporting labs because the community wouldn’t support these efforts. Same with Questionnaires and the Portal. Sorry but occasionally I will chastise the community for not taking a more active role in supporting us developers dedicated to openemrs future. Nothing personal!
BTW it is helpful to get into the habit of creating an order even though not sending electronically and add the order number to order request. Many labs allow this i.e adding reference so included in result.
Thank you @sjpadgett for your advices!
For compendium upload, is there a template for the existing labs hard coded in OpenEMR? I noticed there is a spreadsheet in the code folder, is that it?