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- New Jersey Enacts Technical Fix Law to Address Pathologist Data Concerns
The New Jersey Society of Pathologists (NJSP) and CAP were pleased that the New Jersey Department of Health swiftly passed legislation (AB 4385) to address strong concerns raised by pathologists in March of this year. The legislation, recently signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy, remedies the 2021 demographic data reporting law (Chapter 454), which had implications for locking out pathologists’ entry into laboratory information systems (LIS) where patient's gender and other demographic information were unavailable.
AB 4385 makes explicit that if certain demographic data is “not provided” to the laboratory for patient testing, the LIS system will not lock out pathologist or laboratory data entry or other known, pertinent information regarding the patient. Additionally, the bill adds a “not provided” option for pathologists and clinical laboratories to select when an ordering provider fails to obtain such information.
In March 2022, the NJSP raised operational concerns that the new data reporting law could impede the laboratory information system (LIS) use if not remedied or clarified. The CAP and the NJSP urged changes “to ensure that pathologist medical practice is not impaired by erroneous information technology implementation of any lockout feature that would deny supervising or diagnosing pathologists, and other laboratory personnel, the ability to enter known demographic information for patients in situations where other information regarding the patient is unavailable.”
As noted by NJSP President Valerie Fitzhugh, MD, FCAP, in her letter to the agency: “We do not believe that the law was constructed with the intent to block the medically appropriate data entry of known demographic patient information, but we want to preclude, in advance, such scenarios that would be erroneously premised upon a misconstrued application of the law.”