NBS DATA EXCHANGE

Virginia’s Newborn Screening Program consists of coordinated and comprehensive educational activities, dried-blood spot screening, follow-up by the Virginia Department of Health, and referrals to specialists for diagnosis, medical and dietary management, and long-term treatment. By state statute, every newborn in Virginia should be tested for 33 genetic and/or metabolic disorders within days of birth, unless a parent or guardian objects on the grounds that the test conflicts with their religious practices.

The Department of General Services, Division of Consolidated Laboratory Services (DCLS) conducts the newborn dried blood spot screening tests in collaboration with the Virginia Department of Health (VDH). The Follow-up team at VDH has nurses who coordinate follow-up activities until the infant is diagnosed, screened negative, or reaches 6 months of age. Babies who are diagnosed with certain heritable disorders or genetic diseases through newborn blood-spot screening are referred to the VDH’s Care Connection for Children network for care coordination services.

Virginia Health Information (VHI) is the statewide Health Information Exchange (HIE) for Virginia. The primary function of the HIE is to provide a secure pathway for transporting and exchanging health related data between hospitals and providers and State agencies like VDH and DCLS. Currently, VHI supports electronic data exchange with hospitals and ambulatory providers who send immunization (VIIS), cancer registry, syndromic surveillance and electronic lab reporting (ELR) data from VDH.

VHI and DCLS work in partnership to support the secure exchange of Newborn Screening dried blood spot data. These capabilities support the electronic, secure and standards-based exchange of NBS lab orders and results using nationally adopted health vocabularies, such as LOINC, SNOMED and ICD-10 coding, and HL7 2.5.1 message specifications for the Lab Order Guide (PHII) and Lab Results Interface (LRI).

Although dried-spot cards will still be used for specimen collection and physically delivered to DCLS, hospitals/birthing facilities are encouraged to begin transmitting their electronic orders via VHI's Public Health Reporting Pathway (PHRP). This is the same pathway that is used to send Meaningful Use messages to VDH.

Prospective electronic messaging participants must go through an onboarding and validation process and obtain approval from DCLS prior to participating in Virginia’s NBS Data Exchange program.

Below are all the resources needed for the onboarding process.

For any questions, please email DCLS_MSG_SPPT@dgs.virginia.gov.