The Analysis of A Statewide Laboratory Survey for Electronic Laboratory Reporting

New York State has enrolled 370 laboratories in reporting Lead, HIV, Cancer, and Communicable Disease results through its statewide Electronic Clinical Laboratory Reporting System (ECLRS) beginning in 2001. In July 2007, the Governor signed a law that requires the electronic reporting of laboratory evidence of reportable conditions. A web-based laboratory survey was developed for New York-licensed laboratories to assess progress toward electronic reporting. The goals of this study are to describe the responses to the survey, to evaluate whether laboratories reporting through ECLRS are meeting PHIN standards, and to identify laboratories for electronic reporting implementation. A letter was mailed to all New York-licensed clinical laboratories in January 2008 requesting that laboratory personnel fill out the survey posted on the ECLRS home page. The survey asked about the type of tests that the laboratories perform, the use of reference laboratories and of laboratory information system (LIS) vendors, and disease-specific questions. Responding laboratories were matched with the ECLRS laboratory database to identify laboratories that are not reporting through ECLRS. Letters were mailed to 927 laboratories; 222(24%) labs responded as of April 2008: 116(52%) hospital laboratories and 106(48%) commercial laboratories, of which 9 are national. 148 (67%) laboratories reported sending specimens to 73 reference laboratories. The three most common reference labs were Quest (receiving specimens from 76 labs), the state laboratory (43), and LabCorp (34). 107(92%) hospital laboratories used LIS systems, as did 54(51%) of the commercial laboratories. The most often used vendors were Meditech(32), Mysis(31), Soft(26), and Cerner(21). 72(32%) labs used LOINC/SNOMED coding, and 52(23%) labs used PHINMS. 11 labs had to be contacted for reporting. A follow-up letter will be emailed to non-responding laboratories. Assistance will be provided to help non-reporting labs implement electronic reporting.