Notifications
Clear all
General Discussion
14
Posts
6
Users
0
Reactions
98
Views
Topic starter
We have been using a product EMR Link from Liasion. Lately, like 3 months, we have been having troubles with the connection. The VPN won't work. We ping the connection but nothing. It basically puts the office back to paper orders for labs and xrays. Very frustrating. Anyone else? Any suggestions-even different products?
Kristen
WTMA
Posted : September 26, 2016 6:25 am
We haven't been having this issue and we use them for about 98% of all our lab orders.
Possibly you have a issue with equipment on your end or a incompatibility with their equipment?
Posted : September 26, 2016 6:32 am
We also use Liaison for the majority of our lab orders and have not had any problems. We don't use a VPN. We get great customer service we do have any problems.
Posted : September 26, 2016 6:44 am
Topic starter
How do you connect if not by VPN?
Posted : September 26, 2016 6:54 am
Topic starter
How do you connect if not by VPN?
Posted : September 26, 2016 6:55 am
we also use Liaison and interface with 3 different labs. No downtime. Use it for 100% of our orders for lab. Great customer service as well. We also do not connect by a VPN.
Posted : September 26, 2016 7:00 am
Our orders are generated by an EMR-Link-provided process orders encounter form.
There is a scheduled job that runs every 15 minutes or so that retrieves result messages as HL7 and writes them to the Linklogic inbound folder.
I'm curious, do you happen to use Sonicwall for your VPN?
Posted : September 26, 2016 7:01 am
Don't know exactly how the connections work but I did contact them to make sure I was correct. The reply I received is
None of your labs are VPN. We only use VPN with lab offices not clinics.
Our process is the same as the one already posted using encounter forms.
Posted : September 26, 2016 7:04 am
Topic starter
We use the EMR link provided process orders form too. And we 'send' the orders to our lab system called Harvest. We do have Sonicwall as our VPN too. Do you actually 'send' your orders? I've talked to a clinic that only looks to see if it needs an ABN but doesn't send the orders thru emr link.
Posted : September 26, 2016 7:16 am
Topic starter
What is the difference between lab offices and clinics? Does your office have an in office lab or do you send out all orders? We have a lab on premises that uses Harvest software. The EMR link connects our CPS to Harvest.
Posted : September 26, 2016 7:19 am
We send out labs to Quest and LabCorp, via EMR Link. through a web service and Flex connector.
We also use Harvest for our local Public Health Lab however we don't use EMR Link for those.
Posted : September 26, 2016 7:23 am
Per your explanation of when Liaison uses VPNs, it sounds like your lab orders are sent to EMR-Link via the typical method of encounter form, but they need the VPN tunnel to send the orders to and receive results from your in-house lab.
We don't have an in house lab, so that's probably why we don't use the VPN.
Sonicwall has a long history of unreliable VPN performance. That's why I asked.
I bet if you reboot the Sonicwall, or possibly just reset the VPN tunnel itself, the tunnel comes back up. The Sonicwall may need some settings adjusted to match the remote peer config. I've seen tunnel lifetime count mismatches cause problems (although it shouldn't). If PFS is enabled on one side and not the other, the tunnel will only initiate from one side also. It will fail to initiate for traffic in the reverse direction.
Posted : September 26, 2016 7:42 am
If traffic doesn't traverse the tunnel for a while it will go down (user configurable and by design). The next time there is traffic that needs to go through the tunnel it will reestablish. However, it may take a few packets to nudge the tunnel to come back up and depending on how sensitive your application is it may cause issues.
Look into enabling keep alive setting for the tunnel...I think the sonicwall had such an option. It will periodically send packets through the tunnel and prevent it from going down.
Posted : September 27, 2016 3:16 am
Not that its helpful to this post but we have used Liaison for years and I can count the number of times on one hand its been down. However it sounds like a VPN/Network Connectivity Issue here not Liaison. I would also suggest trying the FlexConnector in place of the VPN if you are having issues with the VPN staying connected.
Posted : September 30, 2016 9:25 am
