Home Forums Discussions General Discussion In-office lab results/MIPS

My office runs some CLIA waived tests (INR, a1c) and I am having difficulty deciding how to best record these results in AC. We recently activated the interface to LabCorp so I was waiting to see what these results looked like before I explored the options.

There doesn't appear to be any way of manually entering office-based labs, except via the "order" function. Then, these results appear to go into the encounters section, once signed-off, rather than alongside other labs in the imported items section. I'm concerned that:

1. I will have to look in different places for different types of labs
2. We will have issues with data mining/MIPS in the future, especially with the all-important diabetes benchmark a1c

How are other practices handling this? Is there a way of recording CLIA-waived labs in granular format in the imports section (short of having to create my own customized lab interface?)

Pic 1)Only way I can figure is go into Administrative options create the tests you will track/do on site for the practice
Pic 2)then for each patient when test is done go to summary and add the test value , unfortunately don't know a way to get it into imported area as outside labs go to

Thanks! This works well -

Works but not as convenient as I'd like, should be a tab or field on main chart page that has all lab data, think that is somewhere in the 'wish list' in AC

It would be nice to implement a feature where we can pull the latest labs into the note. Also, an easier spreadsheet for tracking things like A1c.

Both the Lab Results quick access from the MRE and the ability to cite lab results into the note are on the wish list. Both are great ideas and an offer an improved experience for users, and both have been suggested a few times in the past. We have an enhancement survey going out soon that will list these and many others and we'll offer you the ability to vote for your favorites. I'll commit to do those which receive the most votes. These are both high on my list for general competitive reasons so we'll likely do them regardless of the number of votes.

Doc Mark,

By adding the in-office labs to tracked data, one can then graph the results, over time, which patients may find of interest. I have a dual monitor set-up in the exam room so that I can show the patient the results on screen.

In addition to adding the data to the tracked data area, I have my secretary scan a piece of paper with the results (we made our own sheets with the date, name of test, and results) into the "Other Laboratory" section. We also do this with dipstick UAs. That way, we can refer back to them without having to dig through the chart notes or print them, if necessary.

Mel

It looks like you have to add A1c and other items to the tracked table manually, which no one has time for... Is there another way? I DO go over graphs of BP and weight, wish I could do labs.

Chris,
If you use a lab company like Quest or LabCorp and direct import into AC, if you click on a result such as HgA1C, then click on graph, you should be able to get every 3 month HgA1C results graphed out over time, and can print results for patients. Quest unfortunately rewrites their software every 2-3 years so instead of having 7 years (I started AC in 2011) of HgA1C results I have 2 or 3 segmented lines of data, which is still helpful. However, if you use a lab and just scan in the results or use more than one lab company, then the data points can't be graphed out like this. I do wish either Quest or AC could get all of the HL7 data points over seven years to connect the dots so I could see all 7 years but the graphs, even though segmented are very helpful.