Lab Result Reporting

Hospital laboratories and reference laboratories are required to report according to the “Reportable and Communicable Diseases Rule." For COVID-19 specifically, please visit the CDC website and refer to the section “Who Can Report” to determine if you should be reporting to the Vermont Department of Health.  

If your facility has an established HL7 ELR feed with the Vermont Department of Health, please report laboratory results through your existing feed.

For facilities with no established electronic HL7 feed, the following are options for electronic reporting:

1. Establish an HL7 2.5.1 feed (preferred) or an automated spreadsheet using the National Flat File schema feed, with either of the following groups:

• Vermont Health Information Exchange (VITL). The Vermont Department of Health is partnering with VITL to enable testing facilities to report electronically. To request this method of electronic submittal of reportable disease testing results, please complete this ELR Request form. Please note that laboratories are prioritized for onboarding based on volume.

• The Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) has a centralized ELR service, APHL Informatics Messaging System (AIMS), that routes messages to individual public health jurisdictions using a single connection to AIMS, rather than a lab needing individual connections with each state. If your facility is reporting to multiple states, this may be a better option for COVID-19 reporting. 

   

2. SimpleReport (COVID-19 reporting only) was developed in partnership with the CDC and is a free tool that makes it easy for COVID-19 testing sites to report their results.

• It works with any rapid point-of-care test so you can quickly report data to public health departments.
• This tool is a good fit for facilities that may be doing repeat testing for the same patients (residents, employees, students, etc.) and/or facilities that would benefit from the built-in workflow and data management SimpleReport provides. Please plan to utilize an alternate reporting method (such as the State of Vermont Test Result Reporting Tool or fax) until we are able to verify the results are being reported through SimpleReport.

3.  The State of Vermont – COVID-19 Test Result Reporting Form is an online web-entry form (COVID-19 reporting only). This tool is a good fit for facilities with a low volume of results to report to the health department. The form is also very quick and easy to onboard, making it a good interim reporting solution for facilities that plan to utilize other electronic reporting solutions with longer onboarding times.

• Register your facility for online reporting. Your facility cannot submit result data through the reporting form without registering first.
• Once the facility has been registered, you will receive the link to the reporting form and a unique username and password for your facility within 2-3 business days. This allows us to prepopulate facility-specific information in the back end to help your facility more easily enter result data.
• Questions? Contact [email protected] 

If you are attempting to onboard for electronic reporting, please fax any positive test result to 802-951-4061 within 24 hours. The faxed report should include patient demographic information (name, date of birth, sex, race and ethnicity, and contact information), test type and result, and reporting facility.

If your facility cannot report electronically, you may choose to use the weekly lab report form.

Eligible hospitals and clinical access hospitals should follow Promoting Interoperability Program requirements. Electronic lab reporting (ELR) is a reporting type. Vermont can receive ELR from Eligible Hospitals as HL7 ORU v2.5.1 messages. 

Note to hospitals performing in-house reportable disease testing: Please email [email protected] to confirm your electronic reporting status. All positive results should be faxed, unless confirmation has been made that we are receiving in-house results through an electronic feed.