eCR is the automated generation and transmission of case reports from electronic health records to public health agencies for review and action.

Essentially, it reduces the burden on healthcare providers to accomplish their reporting requirements to public health and improves the timeliness and completeness of case reports at the local, state, and national levels.

According to a recent JAMIA study, the implementation of eCR at the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) has helped improve data accuracy for public health surveillance while cutting clinician burden during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For MDH, the move to eCR also helped to remove inefficiencies and inaccuracies from phone/fax data entry. In addition, all health systems onboarded for eCR in Minnesota are on Epic EHRs. The effort was part of the CDC’s eCR Now for COVID-19 initiative.

As we highlighted in this previous blog post, eCR runs behind the scenes in the EHR to automatically capture and report required information. If information entered in the EHR matches codes of interest to public health, the data necessary for a public health report are sent to the platform. If the data meets jurisdictional reporting requirements, the report is sent to the appropriate public health agencies for investigation and follow-up.

RosettaHealth can assist with any health information challenges you might have, book a free consultation with one of our interoperability experts.