Utah - Electronic Laboratory Reporting (ELR) MU Stage 3 Information for Providers

The Utah Department of Health (UDOH) supports submission of Electronic Laboratory Reporting for Meaningful Use (MU) from Eligible Hospitals (EH) and Critical Access Hospitals (CAH). NOTE: While not part of Meaningful Use for non-hospital providers, the UDOH can work with any provider that wants to implement ELR to help automate/facilitate the reporting of reportable infectious diseases via ELR.

To register intent for ELR MU Stage 3 complete the UDOH MU Registration Form. When registering, EH's and CAH's will need to submit the following information:
  • Name, address, and phone number of the EH or CAH.
  • The EH's/CAH's MU contact person and contact information (name, phone number and email address). This will be the person that the ELR MU Coordinator with UDOH will communicate with regarding ELR MU.
  • Electronic Health Record (EHR) software package and version. EHR technologies that meet the certification requirements for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs are listed on the ONC Website. NOTE: Meaningful Use certification does NOT imply that the product meets all Meaningful Use requirements. If your software is not listed, it may not qualify for Meaningful Use. For additional questions regarding ONC approved software, please contact CMS.

ELR Meaningful Use Stage 3 Objective:

EH's and CAH's work towards establishing an ongoing submission of production-level ELR data in a validated HL7 ORU-R01 2.5.1 message to the UDOH. The requirement for this objective under MU Stage 3 is identical to MU Stage 2, however for any EH or CAH that was unable to accomplish a status of “Active Engagement - Production” under MU Stage 2, this will allow the EH or CAH to move forward with establishing a production-level ELR interface with the UDOH under MU Stage 3.

Validated message should comply with the standards found in the HL7 Version 2.5.1 Implementation Guide: Electronic Laboratory Reporting to Public Health (US Realm) Release 1, HL7 Informative Document (February 2010). NOTE: an HL7 account is required to access/download this document.

ELR MU Stage 3:

Complete the UDOH MU Registration Form to register intent for ELR MU Stage 3 with the UDOH. Currently, all facilities that register for ELR MU Stage 3 will immediately be expected to begin “active engagement”. The basic steps of “active engagement” are:

  1. Set up a transmission interface. Work with the UDOH ELR MU Program to set up a transmission interface for submitting ongoing ELR data to the UDOH. Options include: SFTP, APHL Informatics Messaging Service (AIMS) Platform Route-not-Read, and Utah Health Information Network (UHIN) Clinical Health Information Exchange (cHIE).
  2. Generate and send a compliant ELR HL7 v2.5.1 ORU-R01 message to the UDOH, either from your EHR system via your transmission interface, or manually using the UDOH ELR Online Message Submission Form.

    Use the UDOH ELR Implementation Guide [v1.9] . This guide will help define the HL7 elements that the UDOH is requesting for ELR MU Stage 3 compliance.
  3. Initiate an ongoing live data feed from your EHR system. This feed will be sent to the UDOH testing system until the feed is ready for production.
  4. Send all vocabulary value sets that are in use and sent in your ongoing feed.
  5. Fix all structural and vocabulary issues with the message as per requests from the UDOH ELR onboarding team.
  6. Review the Reportable Events and Vocabulary (Electronic) [v1.1] spreadsheet to identify all laboratory events that are reportable in Utah. If you are unable to filter laboratory events as described in this document, you may send all tests/results to the UDOH and the UDOH can filter out and discard/destroy all non-reportable events.

During this onboarding process, all facilities are expected to cc the ELR coordinator on all written correspondence. All facilities must respond to requests and questions from UDOH within 30 days throughout the onboarding process.

The process of onboarding a laboratory to production ELR can take several months to complete. It is expected that the laboratory will continue to maintain a manual reporting feed throughout the onboarding process and beyond, until the UDOH can do a QA check to validate the ELR matches the manual reporting feed.

The hospital lab will be notified by the UDOH when they can turn off their manual reporting feed.


UDOH ELR Contact

Disease Control & Prevention Informatics Program
edx@utah.gov