Emergency Department Referral Profile

Emergency Department Referral (EDR) provides a means to communicate medical summary data from an EHR System to an EDIS System.

Summary

Physicians frequently determine that patients either onsite, or calling in, should proceed directly to an emergency department for care. The referring physician has valuable data that can inform ED providers, including the history of the current problem, past medical problems, medications, allergies, and frequently a concrete assessment and plan for the patient such as hospital admission. This profile supports the creation of an ED Referral; including the nature of the current problem, past medical history, and medications. Upon arrival of the patient to the ED, the patient is identified as a referral, and the transfer document is incorporated into the EDIS.

This profile may be used to cover a wide variety of ED referral situations, for example, primary care provider to ED Referral, Long term care to ED referral, or even ED to ED referral (as in the case of transfer from a level 2 Critical care facility to a level 1 facility).

ED Referral Process

Benefits

There are nearly 5000 EDs in US, and a significant percentage of ED visits are referrals. There is shortage of critical health data for emergency department patients.

• This profile improves communication of intended patient care plans to ED providers and ensure that no pertinent data is lost.
• It streamlines workflow by obviating telephone calls between busy clinicians.

Details

This profile builds on medical summaries by adding structures to pass data specific for ED referrals such as the estimated time of arrival and method of transport.

Systems Affected

• EHR Systems used in Physician Offices or other ambulatory care settings
• EDIS System

Actors

• Content Creator
• Content Consumer

See Also

Profile Status: Trial Implementation

The Patient Care Coordination Technical Framework is the official master document for this Profile.

Document Sharing

The EDR FAQ answers typical questions about what the Profile does.

The EDR Purchasing describes considerations when purchasing equipment to deploy this Profile.

The EDR Implementation provides additional information about implementing this Profile in software.

References

<List References (good and bad) (with link if possible) to Journal Articles that mention IHE's work (and hopefully include some analysis) >

This page is based on the Profile Template