Interoperability

Within the medical community, countless organizations attempt to standardize data elements pertaining to diagnoses, procedures, financial transactions, etc. PracticeStudio's interoperability provides for seamless data exchange between your practice, other practices, labs, and many other organizations involved in the healthcare community. Typical information interfaces include lab orders and lab results, financial claims processing, and patient demographic and encounter details.

ASC X12N

The ASC uses more than a dozen formats for B2B (Business to Business) transactions. PracticeStudio uses three of these formats for the transmission and querying of financial data:

• 835 - Health Care Claim Payment/Advice: This format is used to process claim payment remittances. It not only prevents you from having to manually post insurance checks, but also incorporates the necessary checks and balances for coordination of benefits. Its implementation is fast and simple to operate.
• 837 - Health Care Claim: The X12N-837 format is the current standard to transmit insurance claims to clearing houses. PracticeStudio’s claims gathering process is simple and sophisticated with a scrubbing engine designed to increase your First-Pass Pay ratio. This increases your payment cycle and decreases initial claim rejections.
• 270/271 - Health Care Eligibility Benefit Inquiry and Response: This dual format is used primarily for insurance verification. A request is sent either to Surescripts® or to a clearing house with an expected return of a patient’s benefits with regard to potential treatments or medications.

HL7 Version 2.5.1

PracticeStudio conforms to the Health Level Seven standards for data exchange for a variety of functions. HL7 has been used for years within the industry and is now becoming a daily mainstay for many clinics.

• Laboratories: If you choose to install a Laboratory interface at your clinic, the PracticeStudio HL7 engine will be used daily to process lab orders and results. Lab orders are input manually via the Touch Screen EHR module, and PracticeStudio then creates the necessary HL7 records and sends them to the laboratory of choice. After the lab processes an order, it creates a group of HL7 records detailing the results and transmits them back to the ordering PS HL7 engine. Once PracticeStudio receives those HL7 results, a lab report is created and attached to the patient’s record, and all analytes are recorded in discrete data fields.
• Demographics: PracticeStudio’s HL7 engine can be used to synchronize patient demographic information between disparate systems. Generally, this functionality is used when a clinic initially installs PracticeStudio or needs to interface with different diagnosis equipment.
• Immunizations: Some clinics have the need to submit to Immunization Registries. In such cases, a properly formatted HL7 record (v 2.5.1) can be created with the necessary segments and CVX codes. These records have been certified by and conform to the standards of the CDC. Since the actual transmission protocols vary greatly between immunization registries, this is accomplished via a third party tool or custom software.
• Public Health: Since many local entities have not yet adopted the standard HL7 Immunization record, PracticeStudio can create an HL7 2.3.1 public health record for the handling of Immunization records.

NCPDP ePrescribing

PracticeStudio is Surescripts® certified for Prescription Benefit, Prescription History, and Prescription Routing and uses standard NCPDP format for the transmission of electronic prescriptions. This format includes the ability to receive and manage refill requests electronically.

Continuity of Care Document (CCD)

CCDs contain sixteen sections that are used to detail a patient’s medical record. PracticeStudio can create a CCD as well as process one created by a different system. Currently, CCDs can be emailed or sent via a standard TCP/IP protocol. Over time, as the market matures, common repositories will be used to house patients’ medical information; sites such as Microsoft HealthVault are in the beginning stages of development.

A CCD contains the following sections:

• Advance Directives
• Alerts
• Encounters
• Family History
• Functional Status
• Immunizations
• Medical Equipment
• Medications
• Payers
• Plan of Care
• Problems
• Procedures
• Purpose
• Results
• Social History
• Vital Signs

HL7 FHIR Interface

FHIR® – Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (hl7.org/fhir) – is a next generation standards framework created by HL7. FHIR combines the best features of HL7's v2 , HL7 v3 and CDA product lines while leveraging the latest web standards and applying a tight focus on implementability.

FHIR solutions are built from a set of modular components called "Resources". These resources can easily be assembled into working systems that solve real world clinical and administrative problems at a fraction of the price of existing alternatives. FHIR is suitable for use in a wide variety of contexts – mobile phone apps, cloud communications, EHR-based data sharing, server communication in large institutional healthcare providers, and much more.

PracticeStudio X20 FHIR Resources:

• Developer Portal Terms of Use and FHIR API License Agreement
• FHIR API Documentation