Source: Healthcare Innovation
Eliminating paper, faxes and phone calls from the referral process has proven to be a stubborn interoperability challenge to solve, but health IT experts are still working on it. This spring, a Portland, Ore., primary care clinic and a behavioral health group will begin piloting the 360X closed-loop referral management tool embedded in their Epic and Netsmart EHRs. Several speakers gave updates on 360X at the March 9 meeting of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s Health IT Advisory Committee (HITAC). Brett Andriesen, infrastructure branch chief in the Office of Technology at ONC, explained that the work on 360X was launched way back in 2012, as part of the State Health Information Exchange cooperative agreement program. “The goal was to enhance referral management across different EHR vendor products. It has since been extended to include additional care transitions,” he said.