Encounter Notification Service (ENS)

  Keeping You Connected To Your Patients

WVHIN offers a service which enables medical personnel to receive real-time alerts when a patient has a hospital encounter. The service is offered in partnership with participating hospitals at no cost to ambulatory providers.

Customizable by practice, the WVHIN ENS will send a secure email message to providers for active patients in the practice. Practices may choose which alerts are most relevant to them, such as: hospital admission, hospital discharge, or emergency room visit. Coupled with the HIE, participating physicians will be able to access relevant clinical documents to better coordinate care for their patients.

Benefits of Participating in ENS

  • Real-time notification of hospital visits (admit, discharges, or ER) for active patients in your practice
  • FREE to any provider affiliated with a participating hospital
  • Proactively coordinate your patients’ care and schedule any necessary follow-up treatment or visits
  • In conjunction with the HIE, review medical records from your patient’s hospital stay
  • Receive summary of care, chief complaint, and discharge disposition (if sent by hospital)
  • ENS can facilitate additional Medicare reimbursements by allowing TCM (Transitional Care Management) codes to be billed – i.e., seeing your patients within 7-14 days after a discharge
  • Readmission Alerts: WVHIN can let your hospital know when a patient you have recently discharged is readmitted to another hospital within 30 days. In addition, WVHIN can let your registration/ triage area know when a patient who has just registered is a 30 day readmission from any other hospital.

ENS notifications are delivered securely to providers via WVDirect email messaging. For more information and to sign up for the Encounter Notification Service (ENS) call 304.558.4503 or email  info@wvhin.org.

ENS PROMPT

Proactive Management of Patient Transitions

ENS PROMPT is a secure, web-based tool to help your organization better manage your notifications.

Prompt v2.1 Laptop

ENS PROMPT Features

  • Encounter alerts stream continuously in real time
  • FREE to all users with no user limit on organizations
  • Advanced, custom filter options, with the ability to save custom filters for easy reuse.
  • Download alert data in spreadsheet format
  • View data spanning the past 30 days
  • Search patients by name or MRN
  • Manage notifications by status – use ENS PROMPT’s real-time tracking feature to mark patients ‘Complete’ and streamline workflow
  • View patients’ readmission count
  • View patient’s across multiple patient panels

ENS PROMPT Demonstration Video

Frequently Asked ENS Questions

How Does ENS Work?

Your practice will provide a list of patients for whom you would like to receive alerts. If one of your patients, Mary for example, is admitted to the hospital, you will receive a real-time alert that Mary was admitted. You can also receive a notification upon Mary’s discharge, at which time you can choose to log into the HIE and view Mary’s discharge summary.

Can I Receive Encounter Notices For Any Patient?

You can receive notices for patients with whom you have a current doctor-patient relationship, and when your role makes it generally appropriate to be informed about a hospitalization.

Do I Need to Get My Patient’s Permission?

Patients have the right to opt out of notifications and other WVHIN services. While only a small percentage of people typically choose not to participate, it is important that patients are given the opportunity and information to make that choice. Your practice will need to identify participation in the health information exchange by distributing the WVHIN patient notice and keep information on hand to provide to patients who may want to opt out.

How Soon After An Encounter Is A Notification Sent?

WVHIN receives information from hospitals in near real time and will send notifications within moments of an encounter being recorded in the hospital’s own electronic medical record.

How Do I Receive Notifications?

Notifications are delivered directly to the individual responsible for a patient’s care via a number of secure methods including DIRECT, the national standard for secure email. WVHIN can provide a WVDirect inbox to you at no cost.

Is There A Cost For ENS?

ENS is a service provided in partnership with area hospitals. There is no cost for ambulatory providers, but you must be associated with a participating hospital to use ENS.

How Do I Sign Up For ENS?

Please contact us at info@wvhin.org and let us know you are interested. A WVHIN representative will help you start the process. Thank you for your interest in WVHIN!