When patient referrals and epicrises are saved in Kanta
- documents can be retrieved to support the patient’s care regardless of where the patient is being treated
- data is also easier to access by those other than the original sender and recipient
- the data controller's archiving obligation is met
- referral and epicrisis documents can be viewed by the patient in MyKanta.
Saving a referral and/or epicrisis in Kanta does not replace existing integrations or referral-epicrisis processes between the referring party and recipient. The referral and/or epicrisis will be forwarded to another health care unit via the current referral-epicrisis systems in accordance with existing practices.
Use of referrals and epicrises
Referrals and epicrises are stored in Kanta using the national views LÄH and PAL.
The referral view (LÄH) is used when directing a patient to another organisation to receive health care services. The referral view can also be used in situations where the responsibility for care is not transferred, and only a consultation from another organisation is requested.
The epicrisis view (PAL) is used when information about the completed treatment is gathered as an epicrisis for the referring party or other party responsible for follow-up treatment.
Read more about how referrals and epicrises are processed and archived, and about data content:
Referrals and epicrises transfer the responsibility for care to another party, whereupon the disclosure of data between the parties is necessary for the continuity of care. The referral and epicrisis will be agreed with the patient so that the patient is aware of the disclosure of their data. In this situation, the law allows for data disclosure, and no separate consent or permission is required.
If the patient has not granted consent to data disclosure or has set denials of consent, the referral and epicrisis data will not disclosed via Kanta for access by other service providers. However, this does not prevent the parties involved in the patient’s care from forwarding referrals and epicrises through referral systems in order to safeguard the patient’s treatment.
Referrals appear in MyKanta on a separate page in the Terveystiedot (Health information) section. Since the same referral is archived by both the referring and receiving organisation, citizens can always see the latest version of their referral in MyKanta.
Epicrises are connected to referrals in MyKanta whenever possible. If an epicrisis is not related to any referral, it will be visible in the Epicrises with no referral section. Citizens can also see the latest archived version of their epicrises, if the epicrisis was was archived by both the referring and receiving organisations.
How to deploy the referrals and epicrises functionality
You can deploy the functionality once your organisation has joined as a user of the Patient Data Repository.
To start using the referrals and epicrises functionality:
Contact your information system provider to ensure that the functionality can be deployed in your patient information system.
Systems in which the referrals and epicrises functionality has been joint tested can also be found on the Patient Data Repository Status page.
Agree on the deployment of the functionality and the tasks required for deployment with your system provider.
If the referrals and epicrises functionality is being deployed in the patient information system for the first time, carry out a deployment test together with your system provider. The test involves entering the data for a specified test case at a predetermined time.
The deployment test can be performed for the entire referral-epicrisis process with two participating health care providers: the referring party and the recipient. If deployment of the functionality is only required for referrals, the test can ensure the archiving of referrals only.
Send a report of a successfully completed deployment test to Kela.
You may deploy the service in production use as soon as the deployment test is successfully completed.