The topic of referral communication is of great importance as an additional service close to the EPD. Suitable tools for admission management and communication with referring physicians are of particular interest to hospitals. The article explains the background and benefits of a generic solution.
Independently of the “non-directed communication” of an electronic patient dossier (EPD), healthcare professionals have the need to digitally exchange reports, findings and referrals directly from the primary systems with other healthcare providers in the course of treatment (“directed communication”).
At best, the transfer of a patient from the general practitioner takes place without own data acquisition and with minimal personnel effort.
According to the eHealth Switzerland 2.0 strategy of the Confederation and cantons of 14 December 2018, EPD-related applications promote the efficiency of processes in the healthcare system and have therefore been massively promoted.
The historically determined fragmentation of the care landscape in the Swiss health care system has made implementation massively more difficult. As of today, it has not yet been possible to effectively solve the interface problems between the providers and to manage the allocation processes consistently.
Now Visionary offers hospitals in Switzerland a referral network with proven added value
Thanks to docbox, a seamless end-to-end process between physicians in private practice and hospitals can be implemented that is proven to work. The solution enables the electronic referral of patients to the hospital and the transmission of medical data in both directions.
The reason for the success is on the one hand on the technical level, but on the other hand mainly on the process and control level: “The docbox system works technically, the hospital has less process effort and above all we have proven that the docbox hospital connection is really used by the referring physicians”, explains Olivier Willi, CEO of Visionary AG.
With more than 12,000 doctors, docbox is the largest and most successful eHealth platform in Switzerland. It has been supported by doctors and health professionals for 18 years.
