Submit an electronic laboratory report (ELR) to a public health agency using an HL7v2 ORU^R01 message per the HL7 Electronic Laboratory Reporting implementation guide
domain: hl7.org · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
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Verified steps
Build the message per the HL7 v2.5.1 Implementation Guide: Electronic Laboratory Reporting to Public Health, Release 1 (US Realm), which remains the stable, regulation-referenced ELR standard
Populate OBR-31 (reason for study/diagnosis context) and reportable-condition/organism coding required for public health case context, beyond a routine clinical lab result
Set OBX-11 (observation result status) to preliminary (P), final (F), or corrected (C), and resend corrected results as new messages rather than patching in place
Include an SPM specimen segment and any other elements required by the receiving jurisdiction's ELR companion guide
Transmit to the jurisdiction's ELR intake endpoint and process the MSA/ACK response, handling AR/reject codes tied to missing reportable-condition mapping
Known gotchas
HL7 has retired Release 2 of this ELR IG and folded its content into the Laboratory Results Interface (LRI) IG's Public Health Reporting Use Case (PH_Component) -- confirm which spec version the destination jurisdiction currently requires before mapping fields
Every state/local health department layers its own companion guide (required LOINC/SNOMED value sets, extra PID fields) on top of the national IG; a nationally valid message can still be rejected locally
Corrected results (OBX-11=C) must be sent as new messages, not edits to the original -- otherwise stale results persist in the registry
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