Disease Reporting Enhancements for Laboratories Submitting Data to PA-NEDSS - Pennsylvania Electronic Laboratory Reporting (PA-ELR)

PA-NEDSS provides secure, web-based disease reporting and surveillance capabilities for over 2,000 hospitals, laboratories, individual medical practices, and public health staff in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  Over 170,000 disease reports have been submitted in the application.  PA-NEDSS has improved the timeliness and accuracy of disease reporting in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and has expanded the public health infrastructure to improve the responses to possible emergencies.

 As part of the next generation of disease reporting, the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH) has developed a solution called PA-ELR.  PA-ELR is an enterprise-level system that is scalable, secure, and can accommodate the needs of various laboratories and the goals of the DOH.  Implementing this solution will reduce reporting cycle times and improve the response time of public health staff disease investigators.

 PA-ELR will initially support laboratories reporting via PA-NEDSS and will later be expanded to program areas outside of Infectious Disease, Vaccine Preventable Disease, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Tuberculosis, and Lead.  PA-ELR will provide laboratories with two methods of submitting test results to the DOH.   Laboratory messages and results will be submitted via a manual upload through a web page or automatically via an ELR Web service. PA-ELR will initially only accept Health Level 7 (HL7) version 2.3.1 formatted Unsolicited Observation Messages (ORU) that conform to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) standards.  Additional standard data formats will be supported in future releases. PA-ELR will be capable of receiving and processing at least 275,000 transactions per day.

 Both submittal options incorporate the requirements from the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to ensure security and privacy of a patient’s Protected Health Information (PHI).  All data will be electronically signed using digital certificates.  A message validation process will check for completeness and accuracy of the messages to ensure data integrity. 

 The first phase of the PA-ELR project will be a pilot project consisting of laboratories selected based on reporting volumes and diversity of program area test results.  Pilot laboratories will be notified and must agree to dedicate technical staff toward this project during the pilot.  The PA-ELR Pilot began in July 2004 with a go-live date slated for November 2004.

 The DOH wants to inform laboratory professionals of this improved disease reporting option.  The DOH has provided additional detail to the public at http://www.dsf.health.state.pa.us/health/cwp/view.asp?Q=234580.  Please visit this site to learn more about ELR.  Interested laboratories can register for ELR at http://webserver.health.state.pa.us/health/PA-ELR/.  Email communications and inquiries can also be forwarded to PA-ELR@state.pa.us.