Health Information Exchange (HIE): Connecting care

Electronic health information exchange shares patient medical record information between health care organizations involved in the treatment of the same patient. The UW Health medical record is maintained on the Epic platform and uses two primary applications: UW Health Care Link and Care Everywhere.

How can a new organization/provider get access to UW Health Care Link?

Contact the UW Health Health Information Exchange team at carelink@uwhealth.org. The requesting organization must have a volume of shared patients sufficient to support providing Care Link access. An organizational Care Link Site Agreement is required and must be signed by the appropriate organizational contracting person and privacy officer. Designation of a site coordinator and an audit trail reviewer and compliance audits are required by the organization, with reporting back to the UW Health Compliance Department.

What you need to know about Care Link

• Patients who receive care at UW Hospital and Clinics, American Family Children's Hospital, East Madison Hospital, the UW Health Rehabilitation Hospital or UW Health outpatient clinics will have their health care records available for their primary care physicians' review.

• After establishing a Care Link account with a secure user name and password, referring physicians may access patient reports when their patients have encounters at UW Health. Physicians may elect to receive an e-mail notification that contains all newly-released information regarding patients' treatment, and log in at their convenience to access the information.

• Access to the patient’s clinic and inpatient records and results is provided to physicians and designated clinical staff.

• Care Link requires no special software. All physicians need is an Internet connection.

• The application is available at no charge and can be accessed through a website that is user name- and password-protected.

Care Everywhere "pulls" information by allowing providers access to a patient's electronic health record when that record is kept by another health care organization. It "pushes" information during a planned transition of care to another facility by sending a summary of care to the patient's primary care provider or to the referred-to provider.

The types of information shared

The information shared depends on each organization's electronic health record system. It may include:

• Allergies

• Medications

• Medical, surgical, family and social history

• Immunizations

• Records from clinic visits

• Records from emergency room or hospital stays

• Test results (including HIV)

• Diagnoses (including HIV)

• Procedures

Setting Up electronic exchange for Meaningful Use Transitions of Care (TOC)

• If you use EPIC as your electronic medical record, please contact your Epic TS to obtain UW Health's provider file.

• If you do not use EPIC but use MaxMD as your HISP, please contact MaxMD to obtain UW Health's provider file.

For General Health Information Exchange questions, please contact:

• Diane Cook at dcook@uwhealth.org or (608) 830-2524

• Tawny Stammen at tstammen@uwhealth.org or (608) 720-2471

For questions regarding setting up electronic exchange for Meaningful use Transitions of Care (TOC) or Direct addresses, please contact:

• Jody Wyttenbach at jwyttenbach@uwhealth.org or (608) 720-6531

• Linda Drummond at Linda.Drummond@uwmf.wisc.edu or (608) 821-4887

UW Health only exchanges direct addresses with members of the DirectTrust.org. DirectTrust.org is organized as a non-profit, competitively neutral, self-regulatory entity created by and for Direct community participants. Our goal is to develop, promote and, as necessary, help enforce the rules and best practices necessary to maintain security and trust within the Direct community, and to foster widespread public confidence in the Directed exchange of health information

Resources

• www.healthit.gov

• www.directtrust.org

• www.healthewayinc.org