Low-Cost Tool for Electronic Laboratory Reporting on-Boarding Project Management

BACKGROUND: Meaningful Use regulations encourage Public Health Agencies to demonstrate a standardized onboarding process for implementing public health reporting. In light of this need, the North Carolina Division of Public Health (NC DPH) developed a low-cost tool for managing the electronic laboratory reporting (ELR) on-boarding process. The current project management system was developed out of a progression that began with Excel spreadsheets, advanced to a customized Access database, and culminated with the online collaboration tool that we use today. While each of the early methods worked well at the time they were implemented, as the volume of on-boarding facilities increased to over 120 ELR implementations, NC DPH needed a more robust system. NC DPH determined that the new system also needed to include a method for collaborating with over 200 facility and vendor contacts in a structured and organized manner.

METHODS: As ELR on-boarding continued, NC DPH used a plan, do, study, act methodology to evaluate the project management process and conclude that the previous tools did not allow for collaboration internally among the NC DPH ELR team or with our external partners. Various software options were evaluated against cost considerations as well as their ability to function as a project management and collaboration tool. Eventually, a low-cost option was chosen that utilizes online spreadsheets and allows for an unlimited number of collaborators.

RESULTS: NC DPH uses an online spreadsheet warehouse to manage the ELR on-boarding project and to collaborate with facility and vendor contacts through the various on-boarding implementation steps. Multiple spreadsheets are linked together as relational tables to store basic information about the facility (i.e. priority, volume, vendor information), track the facility’s milestones in the ELR process, and collaborate with external partners on vocabulary mapping and ELR message review. The tool enables collaborators to submit their vocabulary mapping documents for review by NC DPH as well as a tracking system for NC DPH to communicate and track issues identified with ELR test messages.

CONCLUSIONS: This online tool has streamlined the internal review process of the NCDPH team for validating vocabulary mapping documents and ELR messages. It has also greatly enhanced collaboration between NC DPH and its external partners as they progress through the ELR on-boarding process.