User Guide — Lab Interfaces

Over the course of each interface implementation, athenahealth spends a significant amount of time working with the lab to meet its testing requirements. Therefore, your electronic results should reflect what you would have typically received via fax. On the first day that your interface is live, you may continue to receive faxed results as you have in the past. You should follow up with your lab to make sure that they have turned off your faxed results.

Unlike the faxed copies of lab results, athenaOne creates a separate document for each test performed.

Note: Click the View All Results link to see a consolidated view of all results in REVIEW for the patient.

When athenaOne receives a result, athenaClinicals automatically routes it to the correct patient based on the patient's first name, last name, and date of birth. If athenaClinicals cannot find an exact match between the patient information in athenaOne and the information sent from the lab, it places the result in HOLD status.

You may not see an automatic match for the following reasons:

• The patient goes by two names (for example, "Bob Smith" is listed in athenaOne, but the performing facility sent "Robert Smith").
• The patient's name is misspelled (for example, "Kathryn Smith" vs. "Katherine Smith").

In these cases, the practice can tie the result to the correct patient. When a practice user ties the result to the correct patient, athenaOne creates a mapping that automatically routes any future results from the lab, with the same demographics, to the selected patient.

Important: Check the patient's athenahealth ID# and date of birth when tying a result to a patient. It is very important that you map results to the correct patient.

If yours is an athenaEnterprise (multiple provider group) practice and you believe a patient has been mapped to a record in the wrong provider group, please contact the CSC by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu.

When athenaOne receives an interface result, it routes the result to your practice based on information provided by the performing facility. Most labs provide athenaOne with a unique identifier in the message to help us route results to the correct department. If the facility is unable to provide us with a department identifier, athenaOne routes your results based on the providers listed in the message.

If athenaOne receives results for your practice for unlisted providers, we map the result documents to your STAFF inbox. If you have providers that work out of multiple departments, you must let athenahealth know which department that provider uses as a primary location. If you feel that one of these mappings is incorrect, please contact the CSC by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu to have it modified.

Note: athenaOne can route a result for an account number or provider to only one department.

When athenaOne receives results via your interface, it attempts to automatically map them to an order that you placed in athenaClinicals. If athenaOne can find a matching order for the correct patient in your practice, it ties the results to that order. If the result returned by the performing facility does not match the original order, athenaOne cannot automatically tie results to the order. For example, if a provider ordered a URINALYSIS COMPLETE but received results for a URINE CULTURE, those results would not be tied to the order. You can still manually tie the results to the order if you believe the lab performed the correct test.

Note: If you are concerned that a result order type that you received for a particular order is incorrect, please check that you ordered the right test. If you ordered a bolded test and you still believe that the test results are different than what you ordered, please contact the CSC by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu.

Interface results are generated in real time and appear in the patient's chart as soon as the lab sends them. You no longer need to wait for the lab to fax your lab results or for athenahealth to process and route those faxes.

If your practice uses athenaExchange for external data interfaces with athenaOne, you can directly access the raw inbound message sent via interface in the associated clinical document, instead of searching for it on the Interface Message Queue Manager page.

Your practice must have the Custom Quickview Link Code functionality (interfaces) enabled to access the Interface Message Queue Manager page. You must have these permissions to access this page.

• Interface Admin: View Message Queue
• Interface Admin: Map Messages (except Insurances)
• Interface Admin: Map Insurance Messages

To view the raw message version of a clinical document

1. Open an interface-generated document via the patient chart, Clinical Inbox, or other location.
2. Click Inbound Message.
   The raw message sent via the interface for this clinical document appears in a new window.
3. To close the window, click the X at the top right of the window.