colLABoration: The Orchard Software Blog

Universities across the U.S. are diligently putting together plans for a safe and efficient return to campus for students and faculty. Campuses are planning to resume activities gradually as health and safety conditions allow. Many are choosing to reopen in stages, with a revised academic calendar for the fall, to limit the spread of COVID-19 while ensuring the continuity of teaching. Among other concerns, university administrators are addressing classroom density, face coverings, contact tracing, and devising a plan for coronavirus and antibody testing. To protect the health and safety of those returning to campus and essential on-site workers, many universities are suggesting baseline viral testing for SARS-CoV-2. 

Orchard Software understands the unique challenges laboratories and healthcare organizations (HCOs) face surrounding patient security and confidentiality, system reliability, and conscientious spending. To help alleviate these concerns, as an option, Orchard can host your LIS in a secure, reliable, and up-to-date manner in fully redundant, HIPAA-compliant storage centers.

Orchard Software understands the unique challenges laboratories and healthcare organizations face surrounding patient security and confidentiality, system reliability, and conscientious spending. To address these challenges, some laboratories choose to host their LISs in the “cloud.” Like many software companies, Orchard works diligently to make our software available in a hosted environment, and we wanted to feature the cross-departmental team that has made hosted systems possible.

The transition from reimbursement models that pay for volume of services to those that reward for value and positive outcomes is in reality a slow and arduous road to travel. While there is agreement that value is a much better concept to base payments on, getting there is a complex endeavor in the convoluted world of healthcare reimbursements. However, as our healthcare system continues to move toward value-based systems, it is important for laboratory professionals to understand how this shift impacts their service and where laboratory data comes into play in value-based contracts.