eHealth Ireland and Clanwilliam Health work together to simplify how GPs Refer Patients to Private Hospitals

Private hospitals can now sign up to access e-referrals with Clanwilliam Health using Healthlink, the national messaging broker. Following the recent deployment of the e-referrals service to all public hospitals, Clanwilliam has collaborated with eHealth Ireland to enable a similar capability for all private hospitals that sign up for the service. This enables private hospitals to send and receive clinical referrals and discharges to GPs in primary care through the use of Healthlink.

Private hospitals that sign up to the e-referrals service through Clanwilliam Health will automatically find their hospital name appear on the list of referral sites presented to the GP on the Clanwilliam practice management systems, which are used by thousands of GPs in Ireland every day.

“E-referrals are the future and this announcement is very welcome because it will see the number of private hospitals accessing the Healthlink platform increase. This technology removes the need to send a referral letter and the GP doesn’t have to worry about scanning incoming patient records and discharges back into their own system as those can be sent back electronically after the patient has been seen. A real-time confirmation message is sent when a patient has been successfully referred to a hospital, offering peace of mind to all parties and cutting down on the amount of time spent waiting for letters to be sent back and forth by post,” said Richard Corbridge, CIO, HSE and CEO of eHealth Ireland.

Trusted and secure, Healthlink has a long track record in the safe and efficient delivery of electronic lab results, referrals and reports on behalf of Ireland’s primary and secondary care medical communities.

“We are delighted to be working with eHealth Ireland on this e-referral initiative which simplifies how clinical patient information is shared between GPs and private hospitals. Up till now, it’s been mostly public hospitals which have used Healthlink. It makes a lot of sense for private hospitals to use the same technology, not least because GPs already trust it to refer patients every day,” said Eileen Byrne, Managing Director, Clanwilliam Health.

More information about Healthlink is available at www.healthlink.ie, while further details about Clanwilliam Health are available at www.clanwilliamhealth.com.