CDC Awards Grant to Connect Hospital Labs to Exchange Test Results and Patient Information Using SureScripts Direct

It looks like the SureScripts network for secure data transmission is going to get a little more business with the latest grant as last week the American Academy of Family Physicians announced their program for $15 by subscription for physicians to securely communicate. We have the connections for the 2 largest commercial labs, Quest and Labcorp, and this is now yet one more connection to get the hospital labs into the medical records and of course SureScripts already has the connection for e-prescribing already built in here. SNOMED technologies will also be participating. In 2 years, the plan is to connect a minimum of 500 hospital labs to public health agencies and this all comes back around once more to “meaningful use” criteria. BD

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has awarded a grant to three organizations to help connect hospital laboratories with public health agencies so they can electronically transmit data on reportable laboratory results. The three organizations — e-prescribing network Surescripts, the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the College of American Pathologists (CAP) — will provide the necessary technical assistance to enable hospital labs to begin transmitting results within six months, according to an announcement by Surescripts. They will work together in what the CDC calls a “lab interoperability cooperative” to promote the exchange of test results and patient information to support meaningful use. During the two year grant period, AHA, Surescripts and CAP, which is the medical society for physicians and the laboratory community, will recruit, educate and connect a minimum of 500 hospital labs to the appropriate public health agencies. At least 100 of the hospital labs will be critical access or rural hospitals, the groups involved said.