Pediatrician
June 13, 2013

We’ve always tried to be aware that your patients are your patients and that your relationship with them continues well after you refer them to Johns Hopkins Children’s Center for specialty care. However, keeping tabs on that care hasn’t always been easy. For outpatient care we might have sent you a fax or letter, for inpatient care an admission notice and discharge summary. Sadly, we did not give you easy, interactive access to more information. That’s about to change.

Through our new electronic medical record Epic—and its online portal Johns Hopkins CareLink—in the not-too-distant future you’ll be able to receive real time alerts about your patients’ outpatient visits, hospital admissions and discharges, as well as your patient’s chart with test results and imaging reports. Also, physicians logged on to the free portal will be able to send secure messages to Children’s Center physicians with questions or comments about their patients’ care and order consults with our specialists.

CareLink follows months of developing and rolling out Epic, used by more than 250 healthcare organizations nationwide, as one unified patient record system for our entire Hopkins system. Starting this summer, via CareLink, we’ll be making Epic available to pediatric practices in the community and, at some point, to patients through another Epic portal, MyChart.

This has been an immense effort, but we believe Epic will make tracking patients easier than ever for all of us and also improve patient safety—for instance, by prompting physicians to avoid potential drug interactions and improper medication dosages. For more information and enrollment instructions, please visit www.hopkinsmedicine.org/carelink.