Continuum of Care Integrations

eClinicalWorks^® is a founding member of The Sequoia^® Project’s Carequality Framework, a public-private collaborative to remove barriers to interoperability in healthcare nationwide. The Carequality Framework creates a common legal framework, enforces standard technical specifications, and publishes a directory of participants – enabling health information exchanges to become seamless at the point of care. Various vendor systems that are part of the Carequality Interoperability framework can be seen here: http://sequoiaproject.org/carequality/members-and-supporters/

Through Carequality, eClinicalWorks providers can communicate with other Carequality participants across the country. A list of active sites is available at: http://sequoiaproject.org/carequality/active-sites/

If an eClinicalWorks practice has an exchange partner that uses a Carequality participant vendor as their EMR, they can exchange data through the Interoperability Hub. Data exchange is based on Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) profile transactions like Cross Community Patient Discovery (XCPD) and Cross Community Access (XCA).

While there is no central repository of clinical data, as with a regional or state Health Information Exchange, there is a central database of patient demographics. eClinicalWorks has partnered with Surescripts’ nationwide network, National Record Locator Service (NRLS), to match patients and to obtain historical patient visit locations. NRLS accomplishes this by maintaining a master patient index and linkages to all care locations where a patient has previously received care.

Customers must agree to the Carequality and the Surescripts NRLS connection terms to get connected. Once connected, data will begin to be queried and received seamlessly on the backend of the system without any additional manual user input. This service is available at no cost through an on-demand activation feature within the eClinicalWorks EMR.

Information Handling Practices: eClinicalWorks makes query-based exchange functionality available to its customers, but does not handle information transmitted in the course of its customers’ use of Carequality.

eClinicalDirect HISP supports direct interoperability across all certified EHR vendor products and healthcare organizations for the secure exchange of authenticated personal health information. Utilizing Health Information Service Provider (HISP) technology, eClinicalWorks provides the necessary services for exchanging key health information using Direct protocols. By joining the network, providers are given options for creating Direct addresses aiding with the necessary compliance for Meaningful Use requirements of the secure exchange of clinical data.

eClinicalDirect is fully accredited under the Direct Trust bundle and is accredited by the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC). The complete list of HISPs that are part of the accredited trust bundle can be seen here: https://services.directtrust.org/about_accredited_bundle/

The Direct address issued to providers is signed by a third-party vendor, DigiCert. eClinicalWorks supports both organization and provider level certificates for Direct Secure Messaging.

Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) documents can be exchanged through a series of messages using standard SOAP Web services (IHE profiles) between any eClinicalWorks EMR and an external health information exchange including private, public, or regional HIEs. An edge server infrastructure is set up to support this type of exchange, allowing for a single point of connection between multiple eClinicalWorks practices and the HIE, making it a very scalable technology.