Once you've completed setup of RevDirect in your environment, you’re ready to start communicating securely! While you can use Direct to correspond back and forth just as you would with standard email, one of the significant benefits of the Direct protocol is being able to exchange clinical information securely and in electronic format. When you are the recipient of a message with electronic clinical information, those messages and attachments will be delivered directly to your Messages inbox.
When you are the sender of electronic health information, there are two potential paths to follow and that decision ultimately comes down to whether or not you are referring a patient to another provider.
Referral taking place
When an outbound patient referral is taking place, the Direct messaging process can take place entirely within the Referrals component (Menu > Referrals). Upon selecting “Add” to enter a new referral, the internal provider’s name will automatically populate the “Referred By” field while the “Referred To” dropdown list will need to be used to select the name of the consulting provider. When both the “Referred By” and “Referred To” doctors have Direct addresses logged in their RevolutionEHR profiles, the “Send” button will be available:
Selecting “Send” will open a new outbound message addressed to the “Referred To” provider and automatically attach an electronic Summary/Transition of Care file. A personal note and additional documentation (i.e. OCT results, consultation letter, etc.) can be added, if desired:
Selecting “Send” in the composition window initiates the transfer of information to the consulting provider and completes the process.
Referral not taking place
In situations where a referral is not taking place, but another provider requests information from you there are two file types available to help: a clinical summary and a record summary. The choice of which file to use can be based on the specifics of the request:
- Clinical Summary: summary of single encounter
- Record Summary: summary of the patient’s medical record
A clinical summary, as a document covering a single visit, can be created from the “Summary” button within the encounter of interest:
A record summary document can be created from the “Record Summary” button either in the patient header:
Selection of any of those buttons will open a configuration window where the contents and format of the file can be specified. The key designation here to ensure an electronic file is provided to the other provider is setting the File Format value to “XML”:
Once generated and saved, the Messages module can be used to send the file to the requesting provider as an attachment. External providers with Direct addresses logged in their RevolutionEHR profile are differentiated from internal employees by an arrow icon preceding their name:
