Standards Vital for Meaningful Use

“We determined to best support clinician workflows we wanted pushed electronic health record to electronic health record real-time direct messages,” said Miller. “Therefore, when the patient is discharged from the hospital, the message arrives in the primary care physician’s electronic health record before the patient is even out the hospital door. This gives the patient-centered medical home team appropriate access to the information.”

Holly said a critical aspect of physician adoption of Direct messaging is tailoring the message to the purpose of the transmission. “Too much information is a dump truck,” she added. “The doctor has to dig through vital pieces of information and risk missing something important or vital. Too little information and appropriate care cannot be provided.”

For example, when a PCP sends a cardiologist referral, she recommends the PCP to modify the message from the EHR to only send cardiology-specific notes and lab results that are relevant to that visit.