Interoperability: Clinical Messaging

As the Electronic Health Records (EHR) industry has grown, more and more health care providers and hospitals have adopted EHRs. None of these software applications are inherently capable of “talking with” other EHRs – creating silos of patient information. Clinical Messaging offers a standards-based solution for providing clinical information exchange between disparate systems across the care continuum by allowing providers and patients to send authenticated, encrypted health information directly to a known and trusted recipient. Simply stated, the Clinical Messaging solution is secure email that is transmitted via a Health Information Service Provider, or HISP.

Enable a simple, powerful way for providers to securely collaborate on patient care and share clinical information with other providers in the community, while staying within their native application and workflow.

Clinical Messaging makes provider-to-provider communication across care communities as quick and easy as sending an email—providing the confidence of knowing that protected health information stays protected. Clinical Messaging is standards-based and enables providers to send and receive secure messages and associated patient health information in a Meaningful Use Stage 2 Transitions of Care compliant manner. The solution is certified under the 2015 Edition ONC Health IT certification, and is an accredited DirectTrust HISP member, which enables access to provider directory data published by all HISPs participating in the program, to ensure secure reliable message delivery through protocol bridging, even when providers are using different EHR systems.

• A specialist physician uses Clinical Messaging to securely collaborate and share progress notes with the patient’s primary care physician during the patient’s course of treatment.
• A referral coordinator uses Clinical Messaging to securely send a specialist a care summary for a new referral patient, so the specialist’s EHR is pre-populated with the patient’s recent medical history.
• A home care nurse uses Clinical Messaging to securely communicate with a patient’s primary care physician about recent changes in the patient’s health status.