Laboratory Interoperability Cooperative (LIC)

Every hospital and commercial laboratory maintains its own nomenclature of how laboratory tests are named, codified and supplied to physicians or public health agencies. To achieve Meaningful Use, hospitals must identify laboratory tests for reportable conditions using LOINC codes, a standard coding methodology and exchange results using a specific interoperability standard (HL7 v2.5.1). 

The Partnership collaborates with the Laboratory Interoperability Cooperative (LIC), the Ohio Hospital Association and the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) to offer free educational and outreach resources so hospital staff can learn and implement LOINC codes and meet required interoperability standards. Features of this cooperative include:

• Grant initiative funded by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Purpose: to recruit and educate 500 hospitals nationwide to enable electronic laboratory reporting, including 100 Critical Access Hospitals
• In January 2012, 40 percent of Ohio hospitals eligible for Meaningful Use participated in face-to-face LOINC workshops 
• LIC provides a secure web portal for access to best practices guides, FAQs, discussion boards and training materials
• Hospitals can still sign up and get free access to materials and resources (see below)
• CliniSync is certified to provide translation services from HL7 v2.x to 2.5.1
• CliniSync can provide all testing and validation to ensure messaging quality and accuracy before "go live"

Resources

• For signed LIC participants, click here to access the secure web portal
• Benefits and ROI of participating
• Ohio Department of Health Electronic Laboratory Reporting (ELR) website 

Click below on LOINC, LOINC! The Sky is Not Falling  to view our white paper on LOINC coding.