“The e-reporting of COVID-19 test results has been a huge timesaver for our staff.” – Dr. Robert Kraft, CEO/CMO at Salina Family Healthcare Center
TOPEKA, Kan. (PRWEB)
December 15, 2021
As a recipient of the STAR HIE Program the Kansas Health Information Network, Inc. dba KONZA is focusing on effectively responding to the COVID-19 pandemic to transport data to public health and ensure healthcare providers have the medical information to provide safe and effective care. KONZA is announcing today that it has released a new product, Translate, an ambulatory electronic lab reporting product, to reduce physician burden in reporting COVID-19 lab results. This product will improve the health IT infrastructure by turning lab messages used by health information exchanges into compliant lab messages for public health reporting.
Over 700 million COVID-19 laboratory tests have been processed nationwide in the last 18 months, many in primary care physician offices. In order to track the spread of COVID-19, physicians are expected to report the COVID-19 test results to their respective state public health departments. However, many have experienced challenges in reporting those tests electronically and instead resorted to manually entering the lab results onto spreadsheets and faxing them on to the state on a daily basis. That process is difficult, time consuming and expensive, as it takes critical resources away from patient care.
Public health officials have also reported frustration at the lack of electronic reporting capabilities for critical COVID-19 test results. Dealing with faxed test results that then have to be manually loaded into electronic lab reporting software has taken a significant amount of time and resources for public health.
KONZA has successfully tested and deployed a new electronic process to report physician COVID-19 lab results to state public health registries by converting existing health information exchange lab messages to compliant public health lab messages. This removes the manual reporting burden for physician practices and public health registries and replaces it with a low cost, electronic solution using health information exchange data feeds that are already in place in most physician practices.
“KONZA continues to focus on supporting physician practices and our newest offering does just that,” said KONZA HIE Workflow Specialist Rhonda Spellmeier. “KONZA’s new ambulatory electronic laboratory reporting solution allows physicians to administer lab tests and automatically send those results electronically to public health departments. This is a low cost, efficient process that allows precious resources to be used where they are needed, at the point of care.”
Dr. Robert Kraft is CEO/CMO at Salina Family Healthcare Center and Smoky Hill Family Medicine Residency Program in Salina, KS and has found Translate to be a beneficial tool for their providers and staff. “The COVID-19 pandemic has been a strain on everyone in healthcare, adding to the time required for everything we do. The e-reporting of COVID-19 test results has been a huge timesaver for our staff, especially at the time of day when they are trying to get out the door.”
This product was developed using funding from the – U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) STAR HIE Program which is designed to strengthen and expand the ability of health information exchanges (HIEs) to support public health agencies in their response to public health emergencies and pandemics such as Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID 19).
For more information, visit http://www.konza.org.
About KONZA
KONZA operates exchanges in multiple states, including Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, New Jersey, California and Connecticut. KONZA is deeply committed to connecting healthcare providers, patients, health plans, and our technology partners together to organize healthcare data into information that will drive healthcare transformation. Patients, health plans, physicians, healthcare facilities, and other healthcare providers from across the country benefit from KONZA’s delivery of unequaled actionable intelligence. For more information, visit http://www.konza.org.
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Press contact information:
Josh Mosier
jmosier@konza.org
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