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Closed loop specialty referrals

Description 
To improve the quality and operational efficiency of specialist referrals within a major academic partner (UCSF), One Medical utilized the Direct protocol to handle outbound transmission of referral requests and inbound transmission of consultation reports, through a single Direct address. The EHR was updated to automatically include a C-CDA, selected insurance information, and insurance authorization status with outbound referrals. Referrals were sent to a dedicated address at the partner institution, UCSF. The One Medical clinical task management system was updated to automatically route inbound Direct messages containing consultation reports to the ordering providers’ task queue. The implementation of Direct message enabled both One Medical and UCSF to enhance practice efficiency and save a very large amount of administrative time spent processing faxed referrals and eliminated the need to manually route faxed consultation reports to patient charts.
  • tfakhouri@onemedical.com
Start Date 
01/01/2018
Projected End Date 
07/31/2018
Project Tags 
  • C-CDA
  • closed loop referral workflows
  • Closed-Loop
  • DIRECT
  • Direct Interoperability
  • direct secure messaging
  • EHR
  • interoperability
  • Interoperability
Project Point of Contact: kelly.gwynnremove@removedirecttrust.org
Project Results 
The implementation of direct message enabled our partner institution, UCSF, to save a very large amount of administrative time which was being spent processing faxed referrals. The savings were in large part due to automatic transmission of pertinent records and data, and facilitated creation of new patient charts in their EHR.
For One Medical, the closed-loop transmission of referrals eliminated the need for administrative staff to manually route faxed consultation reports to patient charts, which was a time consuming and error-prone process at our current referral volume.