Home
Interface FAQ
CorteXchange
About Us

Frequently Asked Questions

Enjoy a 10% Discount* using this form

Name

Company Name

Email 


You will receive direct access to will take you directly to the Discount Code; be certain to record it properly.
We respect your privacy and will not sell or share your information. Discount code will be delivered to the email listed above. *This offer is good for only one (1) interface per laboratory.

Q? How does the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the stimulus bill) apply to medical practices?

A. The Federal stimulus package contains $19 billion to accelerate the adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records (EHR) and health information technology in doctors’ offices in order to reduce medical costs and improve the quality of care.

Q? What are the payment incentives?

A. The incentive funds are available through Medicare and Medicaid. Eligible primary care professionals must choose to accept payments under either the Medicare or Medicaid programs and cannot receive payments from both. These payments can be up to $44,000 under Medicare and even more under Medicaid. These payments are available to clinicians billing with certain place of service codes associated with patient contact. Medical professionals that normally do not have patient contact such as laboratories are not eligible. Practitioners that are not using certified HER systems by 2015 will see their Medicare and Medicaid payments reduced.

Q? What is meaningful use?

A. Meaningful use is the government’s description of the requirement to insure that providers are selecting and using EHRs in a manner that help improve quality of care and lower costs:

  • Use of a certified EHR for patient care documentation and for e-prescribing
  • Connectivity to a health information exchange to help coordinate care with other providers
  • The ability to submit information on quality measures (e.g. similar to current PQRI and/or Medical Home measures)
  • Submitting 80% of ancillary service orders electronically.  Receiving ancillary service reports electronically or scanning those reports and storing them in the EHR system.

Q? What does my laboratory need to do to be ready?

  •  Determine if you have referring clinicians, with practice management / electronic health record systems, who need to order anatomic pathology cases electronically or receive pathology reports electronically.
  • Obtain contact information for your referring clinician’s practice management system (EHR) vendor.
  • Contact Cortex’s Chris Kramer and request that he contact the EMR vendor with the goal of implementing order entry and pathology results interfaces.
  • Approve the interface project contracts from Cortex and the EHR vendor.

Q? Is this a complicated/time consuming process?

A. Cortex will contract the EMR vendor and determine if, when and how the order entry and results interfaces can be implemented between your laboratory database system and your clinicians EHR system.  There is a standard method (HL7 version 5.2.1) of messages that are required to be used.  EHR vendors may request that alternatives be used, but these alternatives may not be consistent with CCHIT.ORG certification requirements.  EHR vendors that are in compliance will be easier to interface with.  If everything goes well the interfaces can be completed in a couple weeks.  Usually this does not go well. All parties must be ready and willing to work on the interface expeditiously.  Frequently coordinating between the 4 parties (referring clinician, EHR vendor, Cortex, Laboratory) involved slows the implementation and it can take months.

Q? How will Cortex help us be ready?

A. Cortex has implemented a new product CorteXchange.  This product is a high performance, robust interface engine that we can use to support and easily implement thousands of interfaces.  It is a secure network appliance that guarantees delivery of all messages.  All messages that cannot be delivered are stored and delivered when the network is restored.  All network disruptions result in alerts that are sent to Cortex Staff and may be sent to your laboratory staff.  We need to know as soon as possible on the amount of interface demand and we will staff up to meet this demand.  We understand that you need to be responsive to your referring clinicians and they need to be in compliance in the next few months to qualify for incentive payments.