HealthBridge, Kettering Set up CCD Exchange

HealthBridge, a Cincinnati-based health information exchange, and Dayton-based Kettering Health Network have announced that Kettering is the first delivery system in southwest Ohio to connect to a service that instantaneously sends an electronic summary of a patient’s record to other healthcare providers.

HealthBridge, using MirthMail as a backbone, has integrated with Kettering Health Network’s Epic EHR to enable Continuity of Care Documents to be sent to area practices via DIRECT secure e-mail, according to Jason Buckner, HealthBridge's vice president of operations.

Buckner says when an end user at Kettering discharges or otherwise reaches a point in the hospital workflow where a transition of care document would be generated, if the recipient is flagged to receive Direct Mail, Epic connects to HealthBridge via the XDR edge protocol – a secured SOAP Web service connection – that delivers the message to the recipient’s Direct address. The recipient can then view the message in a browser-based client or pull the data directly into their EHR via Edge protocol.

In order for Kettering’s Epic EHR to have an accurate, up-to-date list of HealthBridge HISP users, a file containing all of HealthBridge’s HISP users is sent to Kettering on a regular basis and integrated with the Epic EHR. Buckner says.