If there is one lesson that has been learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s how important it is for public health agencies to have access to timely and complete patient data for disease tracking, case management and contact tracing.
Electronic case reporting (eCR) provides this data during routine periods as well as public health emergencies. The data includes information on patient demographics, comorbidities, immunizations, medications and other treatments.
As of January 1, 2022, eCR is required by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Promoting Interoperability Program for eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals and the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) Promoting Interoperability Performance Category for eligible clinicians.
Moving from Manual Reporting to Electronic Submissions
eCR eliminates the burden of manual reporting on healthcare providers by securely transferring patient and clinical information to public health agencies. There are currently
more than 100 conditions that can be reported using eCR, including opioid overdose, foodborne illnesses and neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s disease.
- The eCR runs in the background of a GaHIN member’s EHR, capturing and reporting required information.
- That information is sent to GaHIN via secure direct messaging.
- GaHIN evaluates the inbound message to confirm it is an eCR report, then sends the eCR to the CDC for validation.
- The CDC evaluates the message to determine if it is a reportable case; if the answer is yes, the data is sent to the Georgia Department of Public Health, which confirms the data flow.
