Ontario community-based family physicians can now receive consultation reports for referrals generated through the Ocean eReferral Network in their certified electronic medical record (EMR) systems through OntarioMD’s Health Report Manager (HRM). HRM’s electronic delivery of the valuable patient information contained in consultation reports informs family physicians about specialists’ recommendations and gives them a complete picture of their patients’ progress and the treatment they receive as part of their health journey. A group of physicians and nurse practitioners at CarePoint Health in Mississauga were the first to pilot this new integration. Expansion to more physicians is currently underway, which allows specialists accepting eReferrals to send their consultation reports via HRM.
“As a family doctor, it’s unfortunately common for the patient and I to meet several weeks after a specialist or allied health professional appointment without really knowing what the practitioner has recommended as the next step for treatment. This uncertainty is frequently due to a missing consultation letter sent by the practitioner. It might be sitting in the outgoing fax pile or our to-be-scanned pile. It might have been sent to the wrong fax number. We have no idea and we have no easy way of finding out,” said Dr. Casey Corkum, Clinical Director and Physician at CarePoint Health.
The delivery of the Ocean eReferral Network reports is the latest enhancement to HRM adding more value for physicians and the health care system from this already indispensable digital health tool, which has replaced the fax machine for many physicians. Reports arrive in clinicians’ EMRs within minutes and are delivered securely compared to faxes which can be sent to the wrong fax number.
HRM has realized an average of $36 million a year in cost avoidance for the Ontario health care system by eliminating the printing, mailing, and faxing of paper reports for clinicians and sending sites. This value of this cost avoidance increases every month as HRM use increases. OntarioMD works with many partners in the Ontario health care system to make HRM an even more valuable digital health service for Ontario by adding more report types, more sending sites and more clinician users. With this growth in use, additional cost avoidance for the health system increases and clinicians can follow up with more patients sooner to enhance patient safety and improve care transitions.
Clinicians, hospitals, specialty clinics that would like to connect to HRM or health care organizations that deliver reports to community-based clinicians should contact [email protected] to get started.
About HRM
HRM is an award-winning digital health service developed by OntarioMD that saves clinicians an average of 30 minutes a day by replacing the handling of paper patient reports from hospitals and specialty clinics by fax or mail with digital patient reports that are delivered directly to EMRs. Electronic delivery of reports gives clinicians timely and up-to-date patient information empowering them to follow up with their patients much sooner. Faster follow up facilitates continuous, coordinated care, prevents complications and reduces the likelihood of patients ending up in the hospital. Today, more than 10,000 clinicians are receiving reports digitally through HRM and this number continues to grow.
About the Ocean eReferral Network
The Ocean eReferral Network is an EMR-integrated, cloud-based technology for health care referrals developed by OceanMD. The Network includes a map-based, searchable directory of health care providers with wait times, intelligent referral forms, end-to-end reporting, and automated status alerts for patients and providers. Using Ocean’s secure, online eReferral directory, healthcare providers can search for specialists and patient programs, view wait times and locations, and create and submit a healthcare referral in real time. To learn more about the Ocean Platform, contact [email protected].
