PDirect Home | Quality at UVA | Clinical Trials | Find a Physician | Tools for your Practice | Referring to UVA | CME

Kidney Disease | Robotic Myomectomies | Improved Communication | Ovarian Cancer | Cardiothoracic Surgery

Improved Communication

Easy Access to Clinical Information on Patients Referred to UVA

Referring physicians now have fast, easy access to information about patients they refer to the University of Virginia Health System. A new online system provides comprehensive information from their patients’ visits to UVA, including lab results, radiology reports, clinic notes and discharge summaries.

“We heard from referring physicians that they wanted improved communication and feedback from UVA Health System – and this is a step in that direction,” says Physicians Relations Manager Liz Nottingham.

UVA’s Referring Practice Online (RPO) is a free service providing HIPAA-compliant, web-based access to view all records from their patient’s visit to UVA. For a referring practice to view records, patients must name their referring physician when visiting UVA.

From the patient’s encounter date at UVA, doctors can view records from the patient’s visit for the 180 days prior to the visit and 90 days following the visit. Reports can be searched by patient or by referring physician, and records are updated every four hours. Referring physicians may also join UVA’s Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) to view radiology images. Reports viewed on RPO can be automatically printed out on UVA Health System letterhead.

The secure, password-protected website allows “physicians to do this at their leisure and not on our timeline,” Nottingham says.

UVA representatives will come to the practice to install the system, train staff and create a desktop shortcut to provide easy access to the site. Each staff member needing access to the website receives a separate username and password.

“The software is very easy and straightforward to use,” says Gayle Usher, Applications Systems Analyst for UVA Health System. “We can train six people on the system in an hour. As soon as we do the setup, they can begin using the system.”

More than 50 practices have already signed up to use RPO. They include Southern Albemarle Family Practice, located in Esmont, Va. Debbie Anderson, Southern Albemarle’s Assistant Site Director, says RPO makes her office more efficient because it’s easier to access records online than calling in or faxing requests and waiting to receive records back. She also likes the ability to track a patient’s history, which is helpful when a doctor leaves the practice and a new physician is reviewing a patient’s records.

“We’re able to quickly get the reports we need back,” she says.

To request Referring Practice Online, contact Liz Nottingham at 434.243.2733 or lmn2n@virginia.edu.