Physician offices that adopt electronic health records are often surprised and disappointed that they are still dealing with faxes and phone calls for lab orders and results even after investing tens of thousands of dollars to go “paperless.” A single physician office may use several labs and it can cost up to $10,000 per lab to connect electronically. Surescripts has tackled an analogous challenge in the world of electronic prescribing but lab orders remains unconquered territory.

Informedika has spent the last few years putting together an “e-requisition network” to enable physician offices to connect electronically with labs. The solution is catching on with physicians in the Bay Area and is starting to spread virally as physicians use the built-in referral feature to get others in their network onboard. I spoke today with Informedika’s CEO, Steve Yaskin who explained the system.

The core functionality and viral nature of this solution are interesting. Providers are also likely to be intrigued by the ability to use Informedika to document and get paid for post-discharge care such as reviewing lab results. According to Yaskin there are CPT codes associated with these activities, but few providers make use of them due to the difficulty of documenting the work with traditional EHRs and practice management systems.

February 13, 2013