The Physician Referral Network Exchange (PRNX)

PRNX™ uses Universata’s Health Information Exchange (HIE) to swiftly move medical record information to the physician(s) of record.

PRNX™ is an automatic notification solution that supports:

• HIPAA compliant processes
• Fast response in getting the correct content (e.g., admission and discharge notification, medical record) to the correct recipient
• Efficient response to your request for an abstract of the medical record as soon as it is ready

In simplified terms, if the hospital is using our PRNX system and the patient has named a physician/specialist of record, the physician receives an automatic notification when:

• The patient is in the ER
• The patient is admitted to the hospital
• The patient is discharged
• The physician is notified and asked if he/she would like an abstract of the record. This release, because of the trusted nature of the physician, hospital and patient relationship, is automatic

By hospital policy at discharge, without a request from the physician, the hospital may send out the record for every patient. What better way to show the hospital’s and the physicians’ commitment to excellence in service and leadership in clinical care for their patients.

No More Surprises for the Physician

Imagine: A patient arrives for an appointment and says “I am here for my two-week follow up! Why didn’t you visit me in the hospital?”

The physician feels like there is raw egg dripping off his/her face for not knowing the patient was in the hospital! Furthermore, there is no record on hand for the physician to see what the diagnosis was. This has happened to every physician, but no more.

Road Blocks to Record Sharing

These policies or procedures are the most common road blocks:

• Patient admissions information at one facility location is not accessible in the surrounding caregiver community.
• The record is not ready at discharge. Patient admissions information is usually prevented from being disclosed by discharge policies and other procedures that delay the readiness of the medical record contact for disclosure.
• While not a policy, there is a perception that hospitals should have this data at their fingertips, when in fact this information usually resides in a data system not easily shareable among the PRNX community.

Benefits of PRNX™

Benefits of PRNX™ to hospitals and physicians include:

• Decreases rush high-priority requests for patients records
• Improves hospital/physician relationships
• Allows new patient admissions by enabling better follow-up care by physicians
• Reduces the time for receiving patient records for billing procedures

Pre-Disclosure of Records

Pre-Disclosure states that when there is a scheduled event requiring a medical record to move within the community, the policy/process that actually schedules this event with the patient also triggers the request for the medical record.

Pre-Disclosure includes the following examples:

• Scheduled appointments
• Elective surgical events
• High-risk events, in which the patient’s well-being is threatened. Examples include the birth of a child, scheduled surgeries like heart bypass, outpatient operations, etc

In these cases, the physician of record is notified by eDelivery or eFax and the patient’s record is requested. Other modules of Universata’s Health Information Exchange Technology, such as Transfer IT™ or PHI-nd IT™, may be used to share a copy of the patient’s record with the hospital.