At Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, we recently transitioned to athenahealth for our electronic health records (EHR) system, and I'm looking to connect with other local health departments that are also using this platform. We're still in the early stages and would greatly appreciate any insights or advice from other departments that have more experience with athenahealth.
We are currently facing two specific challenges:
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Interface with State Lab: We are working on building a bidirectional interface with our state lab. Unfortunately, we've been told that our state lab would be assessed ongoing fees for this interface. However, our state lab asserts that they are not charged ongoing fees for any other EHR interfaces. Has anyone else encountered this issue when trying to build similar interfaces with their state labs?
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Vaccine Inventory Management: athenahealth's EHR doesn't include inventory management, particularly for managing vaccine inventory. This impacts our ability to meet VFC reporting requirements, especially since our legacy system had vaccine inventory management built in. We haven't yet found an ideal alternative process or system for managing vaccines and reporting. I'd be very interested in hearing how other health departments have addressed this gap.
Any insights or solutions would be greatly appreciated!
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Charlie Bryan
Business Systems and Finance Manager
Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health
Lawrence, KS
cbryan@ldchealth.org(785)856-7357
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