“Today, patients can obtain their laboratory test results from their healthcare providers under guarantees in the Heath Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. In a few more years, the CMS’ own electronic health-record incentive programs should spur widespread provider adoption of interoperable EHRs, and that should speed up patient access to lab results considerably. By then, the torrent of an estimated 6.1 billion test results per year will pour automatically into those provider EHRs. From there, lab results should flow automatically to patients by way of personal health record systems “tethered” to providers’ EHRs.”
Article
Joseph Conn, ModernHealthcare, 15 September 2011
