Downtime procedures for the 21st century: using a fully integrated health record for uninterrupted electronic reporting of laboratory results during laboratory information system downtimes.

Objectives: Downtimes of the laboratory information system (LIS) or its interface to the electronic medical record (EMR) disrupt the reporting of laboratory results. Traditionally, laboratories have relied on paper-based or phone-based reporting methods during these events.

Methods: We developed a novel downtime procedure that combines advance placement of orders by clinicians for planned downtimes, the printing of laboratory results from instruments, and scanning of the instrument printouts into our EMR.

Terminological reaction.

When the terminology services at our institution encountered the installation of a new multi-site laboratory information system (LIS), we pursued obtaining a regular dictionary feed to keep the central terminology up-to-date. What we didn't predict was the value added to the LIS implementation effort by a cooperative vocabulary strategy. In this report, we describe how preexisting terminology services were leveraged to facilitate the integration of 2 previously independent laboratories into a new cross-campus LIS.