We had a local practice ask us for our “Direct” addresses, so we can exchange transfers of care with their non-eCW EMR. They told us it was required. We do share many common patients, and as a specialist, we value their referrals and want to play along nicely.
eCW does technically support Direct protocol using their P2P function per the mandate to send Patients or Referrals to other EMRs, but according to training, we learned we have to open a ticket to add each new “friend” into our P2P database that is outside the eCW proprietary network. At least for now, so it seems only partially developed.
We have been using P2P for years (to check the MU box) with one common sub-specialist referral and it works OK, but we also fax the stuff, since we can’t send everything we want to send, and it doesn’t ‘package’ it nicely. It is hard to imagine it works any better with other EMRs.
My questions:
- Anyone using this extensively with non-eCW providers?
- Does it work?
- Any gotchas?
- Anyone routinely using this for Medical Records Release?
This seems like a really cool idea, but it reminds me of eRx in the first year or two when we would send eRx to pharmacies and they technically received it but the people in the local pharmacy didn’t see the Rx or know what to do with it.
Or, am I just out of the loop, and everyone is using this?
