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Scope

This Ontario eReferral FHIR Implementation Guide supports referral patterns for various pathways such as an EMR integration with a Regional Home to Community Care Solution, Primary Care to Home and Community Care, Acute Care, etc. It describes the business considerations and implementation details for enabling interoperability with referral management systems to initiate and manage an electronic referral request.

Two integration methods are defined in this release of the implementation guide that should facilitate a range of different referral processes and software applications with different capabilities:

(1) A SMART integration that allows a Referral Management System (RMS) to be directly launched from clinician’s Point of Service (POS) system to enable users to create an eReferral request; and

(2) A Direct Messaging integration that allows two RMS to exchange referral messages (e.g., initial eReferral request, appointment updates, communications and notifications) via FHIR-based API interfaces.

Out of scope

At this time, the implementation guide does not cover:

  • Communication with a health services directory to expand the list of services/providers that can be searched

  • Integration with Ontario digital health assets such as Provincial Client Registry

  • Semantically interoperable eReferral form templates and/or content