Opening a new practice with a lab: one connected system from day one

Opening a new practice with a lab means standing up clinical documentation, scheduling, billing, and patient communication all at once, then integrating the lab with all of that, too.

For a growing number of physicians, that in-house lab is the difference between sending every specimen out and offering same-day results.

The in-house lab has a name—a physician office lab, or POL—and it handles what your practice can run efficiently on-site: routine, waived, or moderately complex testing. More specialized or high-complexity work still goes to a reference lab. Adding a POL doesn't replace that relationship, but it reduces your reliance on independent labs and speeds up your patient care.

Opening a new practice with a lab like this can mean pulling together five different systems from five different vendors: an EHR, a lab information system (LIS), a claims clearinghouse, a billing service, and something to keep patients engaged once they've left.

Or, it can mean one connected practice, lab included, from the day the doors open. CompuGroup Medical builds and supports every piece of it, all under one roof.

Every new practice needs the same foundation, regardless of whether it includes a lab: somewhere to document care, manage scheduling, and get paid. A POL doesn't change that foundation. It adds one more system that has to communicate with it.

The practices that struggle later usually picked an LIS that never talked to their EHR, or a billing team working off different data than the front desk. The real day-one decision isn't just which lab software to buy—it's whether the clinical, lab, and financial sides of the practice are going to function as one operation or five.

Running the practice: EHR & practice management

CGM APRIMA is a leading solution that handles scheduling, clinical documentation, and practice management. In addition to credentialing and enrollment, this is the foundation every practice needs. The EHR and practice management system becomes the single source of patient data for every other system.

Adding in-house testing: the LIS

If a POL is part of the plan, this is where it lives. CGM LABDAQ delivers a connected laboratory information system (LIS) that easily manages orders, results, and quality control for what you test on-site, and interfaces to reference labs for what you still send elsewhere.

Lab-specific by design, this is the one system that only shows up because of the lab. CGM LABDAQ has served more than 4,000 labs with integrations established to analyzers by 67 different vendors.

Getting claims out clean: the clearinghouse

Once a visit and any lab work are documented, claims have to go out right the first time. eMEDIX delivers an integrated clearinghouse that helps ensure clean claims submission and provides tools for enrollment and denial management with payers.

Getting paid: billing & RCM

Qualified billers are hard to find. The experts from ARIA RCM Services can augment or stand-in as your staff, working from your own systems to manage your billing and increase your payment velocity. Aging claims and denials won't stack up while you're focused on establishing your practice.

The ARIA team has won the Best in KLAS award for ambulatory RCM services (EHR-Associated) three years running—2024, 2025, and 2026.

Staying connected to patients after they leave

By opening your practice with remote patient monitoring services by ARIA Population Health, your practice will ensure better clinical outcomes while also adding billable encounters to support your bottom line.

ARIA Population Health will integrate with your EHR, and our experts can share the patient outreach and enrollment efforts with you. Your patients and your practice benefit without straining your staff.

Follow a single visit through the chain.

A patient receives an automated appointment reminder. She is seen and documented in the EHR, tracked from waiting room to office as she moves through the practice.

If testing is ordered, in-house results flow through the LIS and back into the chart—anything sent to a reference lab comes back the same way.

The visit and any lab charges move through eMEDIX, and the experts from ARIA RCM Services manage the billing and follow-up on your behalf.

If the patient has a chronic condition, ARIA Population Health keeps the relationship going long after the visit ends.

Most practices assemble this from three or four vendors and stitch the interfaces together after the fact. CGM builds and supports every piece of it—EHR, LIS, clearinghouse, billing, and patient engagement—all as one connected system.

When clinical, practice management, and laboratory systems are all integrated, patient data is always available where it's needed. This creates a faster turnaround on results for patients and cleaner, more accurate billing for the practice.

The first 90 days of a new practice launch usually cover provider credentialing and enrollment (your ARIA team can help with this, too), EHR and practice management setup, and staff onboarding.

If a POL is part of the plan, add CLIA certification and interfacing the LIS to your analyzers and EHR. Lab setup is a lot easier to get right when everything around it is already built to connect.

For the ground-level logistics—space planning, staffing, CLIA certification, building a testing menu—see our guide to opening a successful physician office lab.

Ready to see how it fits together for your practice?

Request a demo from your partners at CompuGroup Medical. We'll help you get started.