Skip to page content

Outcomes

Interoperability Connects Urgent Care and Emergency Care in the Netherlands

OLVG in Amsterdam uses Care Everywhere to receive emergency department referrals from a nearby urgent care center, saving 270 hours of registration time annually, reducing transcription errors, and improving transitions of care.

In 2021, OLVG collaborated with Huisartsenposten Amsterdam and Sigra, a regional partnership of healthcare organizations, to design and implement a digital referral workflow. Digital referrals sent directly from Huisarstenposten Amsterdam to OLVG have eliminated the manual transcription process and increased preparation time for OLVG clinicians. Now, it takes around a minute to verify the information for each patient referred to the emergency room from the HAP, saving around 270 hours annually. The project team chose to use a widely available interoperability standard and co-authored a reference guide with Sigra to help other organizations across the country improve their emergency medicine handoffs.

How They Did It

  • Used Care Everywhere to send data from the urgent care center to the emergency department
  • Followed internationally recognized interoperability standards to make the exchange replicable across organizations
  • Published an interoperability guide and hosted a webinar to share in the Netherlands

Read the full article on EpicShare