NovoPath, Inc., has introduced a customizable web portal to its NovoPath anatomic pathology laboratory information system (APLIS), designed to help customers efficiently comply with new legislation requiring labs to provide direct patient access to reports. The new feature enables patients with test results to log on to a web portal through a lab’s website and download the documents generated through NovoPath’s APLIS. The NovoPath Web Portal, company representatives say, enhances security and alleviates the need to maintain handwritten logs, delivery receipts, and other forms of manual tracking.
The patient access law, recently enacted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), requires laboratories to provide patients, or their designated representatives, access to completed test results without requiring their physician’s approval or the resulting laboratory. The new rule also eliminates the exception under HIPAA of CLIA-certified or CLIA-exempt laboratories to provide reports. Patients also can continue to obtain lab test reports from the ordering clinician.
“Web-based access to digital reports is one of the most efficient, economical, and secure means of providing pathology test results to the patient, should the lab and ordering physician care to do so,” comments Rick Callahan, vice president of sales and marketing for NovoPath. “While labs could spend their time and resources to mail or fax written documents,” he adds, “the process is much more time-consuming, with a greater risk of compromising patient privacy.”
“Given HIPAA’s emphasis on patients’ right of access to their personal health information,” Callahan notes, “the new HHS ruling was to be expected. NovoPath developed this feature in anticipation of this ruling.” Learn more about NovoPath AP software.
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