Roll-out on the road to success: Digital hospital prescriptions save time and harmonize therapy processes

13.09.2022 10:18

The digital sending of hospital orders has met with a positive response in medical practices. After CompuGroup Medical (CGM) and AOK PLUS 2021 created the possibility of digitally exchanging hospital orders between the involved actors and synchronizing processes, between January and July 2022 alone, around 10,000 sample 2 orders from doctors' practices were sent to the hospital in digital, structured form AOK PLUS has been sent. This makes this the third most frequently used KIM application.

Planned operations – such as the insertion of a new hip joint – already make up a large proportion of hospital treatments. Ascending trend. However, many of the necessary processes are still analog and the networking between the practices, hospitals and patients involved in the process is often inadequate. In order to provide patients with meaningful support in their search for a hospital, CGM, AOK PLUS and the consulting company Element44 in Saxony and Thuringia have created the conditions to display the hospital treatment prescriptions issued by practices, the so-called template 2, digitally and directly from the doctor's information system to submit the AOK PLUS. The prerequisite for this is the consent of the AOK-insured person.

In contrast to previous, analog processes, the digital transmission of hospital orders to the health insurance companies begins several steps earlier. Until now, health insurance companies usually only found out about the inpatient treatment of an insured person afterwards. AOK PLUS can now take action immediately after the patient has been referred and provide its insured persons with advice on all questions regarding hospital stays.

Process relieves staff and speeds up treatments

A “hospital admission checklist” can help you not to forget anything important in the excitement. The reference to the Health navigator, which provides extensive information about healthcare facilities, also helps patients find the right contact point for their individual concerns. This also helps to relieve the burden on doctors' practices, which are usually the first point of contact for such questions, and to make processes in hospitals and clinics run more smoothly, as many questions can be clarified in advance.

“Especially before a stay in the hospital, many insured people have uncertainties and questions that we can now answer more quickly and holistically,” says Rainer Striebel, CEO of AOK PLUS. “We are convinced that a more effective networking of all partners in the healthcare system improves the quality of treatment, relieves the burden on staff and is a clear added value for our insured persons.”

Telematics infrastructure is the basis for secure data exchange

With this procedure, the data is sent securely within the telematics infrastructure (TI) and the associated communication service KIM (communication in the medical sector). Although the project is still in the roll-out phase, the transmission of prescriptions for hospital treatment is already one of the most used applications via KIM. “This project has immediately brought the electronic hospital prescription to the third place among the most frequently used TI-KIM applications in Germany - behind the electronic doctor's letter and the electronic certificate of incapacity for work. “And this despite the fact that the project has so far been limited to Saxony and Thuringia,” emphasizes Matthias Leu, who is in charge of the project on behalf of CGM.