Managing Electronic Case Reporting Settings

Electronic case reporting (eCR) enables you to easily share reportable casesClosed Cases that require formal notification and documentation, such as medical errors, adverse reactions, injuries, and sentinel events. with public health agencies. This feature also helps you meet MIPSClosed Merit-based Incentive Payment System. A program that incentivizes healthcare providers to improve the quality of care they deliver to Medicare patients. public health reporting requirements. Encompass connects to AIMS, a secure, cloud-based platform the CDC and the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) established to send and receive reportable cases. The goal of the AIMS platform is to take the guesswork out of what, when, and how to report public health data.

What do you want to do?

Once you enable electronic case reporting for your practice and select individual providers to participate in reporting, Encompass automatically sends clinical data, including specific diagnoses, medications, lab tests, and more, to the AIMS platform.

You can think of the AIMS platform as a bridge between you and your state and local public health agencies, meaning AIMS takes the data you send and forwards the appropriate subset clinical information to the appropriate agency in the appropriate format.

Since each public health agency has its own data requirements, and those requirements may change from time to time, AIMS takes the burden of meeting ever-changing requirements off your shoulders.

When a provider finalizes an exam, reportable data is securely sent from the provider's direct mail to AIMS. AIMS will send receipts (and sometimes, requests for more information) to the provider's direct mail inbox.

Before enabling electronic case reporting, you must complete the following prerequisites:

  1. Verify that your local and state public health agencies are collecting data relevant to your scope of practice (for example, melanoma diagnoses). If no public health agency is collecting data relevant to your scope of practice, you do not need to continue.
  2. Register with, and follow all directions from, those public health agencies.
  3. Verify direct mail for the practice and enable direct mail for each provider who needs to report public health data. To learn more, go to Setting Up Direct Mail (Secure Messaging).
  4. Complete the Electronic Case Reporting Participation Agreement with AIMS.
  1. Log in to the Encompass web application as an administrator.
  2. Locate and expand the Firm Settings group.
  3. Click Manage ECR Settings.

    The Manage Electronic Case Reporting page opens.

Electronic case reporting is enabled once for the entire practice.

  1. Open the Electronic Case Reporting page. To learn how, go to Open electronic case reporting settings.
  2. Review the terms and select the Agree check box.

    Additional options appear when the check box is selected.

  3. Under Enable Practices For, select the Production option.

    Your changes are saved automatically.

    APHL recommends at least one provider from the practice participates in a testing period to confirm that data is accurately being transmitted to the registry. To learn more about testing, go to Enable testing.

  1. Enable eCR. To learn how, go to Enable electronic case reporting.
  2. Scroll down until you see a list of providers.
  3. Select the check box for each provider who needs to report public health data.
    • Only providers who have fully enabled direct mail may be selected. To learn how to set up direct mail, go to Setting Up Direct Mail (Secure Messaging).
    • Select Filters to narrow the list of providers and click the check box in the header row to select all the filtered providers.
  4. Click Enable.

    A pop-up prompts you to confirm.

  5. Click Enable.

    The Status column indicates the date and time the provider's eCR was enabled.

  1. Open the Electronic Case Reporting page. To learn how, go to Open electronic case reporting settings.
  2. Scroll down until you see a list of providers.
  3. Select the check box for each provider who no longer needs to report public health data.

    Select Filters to narrow the list of providers and click the check box in the header row to select all the filtered providers.

  4. Click Disable.

    The Status column indicates the date and time the provider's eCR was disabled.

The testing status allows Encompass to automatically send certain clinical test patient information related to reportable conditions to AIMS when finalizing visit notes to ensure messages are transmitted successfully.

  1. Open the Electronic Case Reporting page. To learn how, go to Open electronic case reporting settings.
  2. Review the terms and select the Agree check box if its not already selected.

    Additional options appear when the check box is selected.

  3. Under Enable Practices For, select the Testing option.

  4. Select a provider from the list who will participate in testing and click Enable.

    • You may need to disable any providers who were previously selected who are not participating in testing. To learn how, go to Disable a provider's electronic case reporting
    • APHL recommends at least one provider from the practice participates in a testing period to confirm that data is accurately being transmitted to the registry.

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