Skip to main content

Order Labs and Imaging

Certified EHRs are required to support Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) for Medications Labs and/or Imaging. These correspond to the ONC (a)(1), (a)(2) and (a)(3) criteria and which are described on HealthIt.gov.

This guide will describe how Medplum supports CPOE for Labs and Imaging. The guide for meds will be covered in the Medications section.

Order Form​

Building a custom computerized order form that represents an organization's Diagnostic Catalog and enabling the appropriate provider integrations are the first steps to a CPOE workflow. The form itself needs to support capturing the basics of a diagnostic workflow namely:

  • Choosing which tests to order (e.g. HbA1c) and which provider (e.g. ACME Clinical Lab) to order from
  • Ask on Entry (AOE) questions - specific to the diagnostic test itself. For example, a common Renal Panel AOE question is to ask whether the patient is fasted or not.
  • Specimen details - support data capture for specimen collected time as well as details on the specimen itself.
  • Billing and insurance questions - indicating which account or payor should pay for the test.

This questionnaire demonstrates a sample CPOE order form and can be added to your Medplum app or provider facing application to enable an ordering workflow.

Common Diagnostics Providers​

Medplum is provider agnostic and supports connecting to Lab and Imaging orders of all types, assuming an integration is in place. Common integrations can be found in the integration section. Quest, Labcorp and Health Gorilla are the most frequently enabled.

caution

Lab and imaging ordering requires setup. Contact us at info@medplum.com to enable a provider.

Logistics​

CPOE should be aware of the logistics workflow a provider wants to enable. Below are common logistics considerations and how they effect the CPOE experience.

ScenarioImplications
Specimen collected on siteCPOE must collect specimen collected time and details as well as support printing of requisitions to attach to specimens
Specimen collected elsewhereNo specimen collection details on the form - patients informed of geographic location of diagnostics provider
At-home labPatient data must include accurate mailing address
caution

ONC (a)(2),(a)(3) certification is under development.

Certification for (a)(2),(a)(3) is in progress, follow Github issue for updates.