Practice Fusion Results Integration Quick Start Guide

Transcription

1 Practice Fusion Results Integration Quick Start Guide Quickly and easily connect your Results Information System with Practice Fusion s Electronic Health Record (EHR) System 1 P a g e P r a c t i c e F u s i o n R e s u l t s I n t e g r a t i o n Q u i c k S t a r t G u i d e

2 Step 1: Contact Practice Fusion If you re reading this document you have already begun the process of integrating your center s results with Practice Fusion s Electronic Health Record (EHR) platform a process that typically takes around three weeks, but may take as little as one. You ve made contact with the Practice Fusion Implementation team and they have provided you with several things: A technical contact A business contact Practice Fusion API client a lightweight application that you set up, which connects to Practice Fusion and makes your results available in the cloud Technical documentation that describes how to install and configure the API client A test account, Practice ID, and username and password to connect with 2 P a g e P r a c t i c e F u s i o n R e s u l t s I n t e g r a t i o n Q u i c k S t a r t G u i d e

3 Step 2: Initial Prep Work While the details of the business arrangement are being ironed out, you can do the following to accelerate the process: Send the logo for your center in Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) format with a horizontal aspect ratio to your Channel Management contact Decide how you want your center to be identified in Practice Fusion your Display Name. If there is only one center in your corporation you might just use that name (for example: Envision Imaging); if there are multiple centers you might decide to distinguish it in some other way, such as including the city in which it is based (for example: Wildfire Laboratory (Atlanta)) 3 P a g e P r a c t i c e F u s i o n R e s u l t s I n t e g r a t i o n Q u i c k S t a r t G u i d e

4 Step 3: Set Up Your Information System There are two ways you can integrate your results with Practice Fusion: You can have your information system output your HL7 messages to a folder on a computer at the center site and then have the API client send those files to the Practice Fusion API You can have your information system invoke the Practice Fusion API services directly Whichever option you decide on, your information system must be able to produce HL7 messages that meet the requirements of Practice Fusion s specification. For information on the required HL7 fields, their lengths, and any data formatting requirements, see the HL7 Results Specification guide, then configure your information system to produce messages that are compliant. Step 5: Test the Integration describes how to verify that your messages are valid. If you will be using the API client, configure your information system to output the messages to files in a folder on a computer in your center, then proceed to Step 4: Set Up the API client. If you will be invoking Practice Fusion s API services instead of using the API client, refer to the sections about those services in the HL7 Results Specification, then proceed to Step 5: Test the Integration. 4 P a g e P r a c t i c e F u s i o n R e s u l t s I n t e g r a t i o n Q u i c k S t a r t G u i d e

5 Step 4: Set Up the API client Practice Fusion API client is an application that enables you to exchange results with Practice Fusion s EHR. The API client service monitors a folder you ll set up on a computer at your site. Every 20 milliseconds the service scans the folder for HL7 files older than one minute. If the service finds a file, it performs some validation of the contents and then connects to the Practice Fusion Results API with the username and password given to you by them in Step 1: Contact Practice Fusion. If it connects successfully, it then sends the file to the API, which performs further validation. If the file passes the validation checks it is then added to the Practice Fusion database and is accessible to healthcare providers. The client service then continues monitoring for other files to process. Files with errors are moved to another folder so that you can examine them and resolve the problems. The client also features a user interface that enables you to configure the client and view statistics about files that have been processed. Do the following: 1. Perform the steps in the appropriate guide for your operating system to install the API client: Practice Fusion API Client Installation Guide for Windows Practice Fusion API Client Installation Guide for UNIX and Linux 2. Perform the steps in the Practice Fusion API Client Usage Guide to configure the API client after it is installed and then use it through both testing and production 5 P a g e P r a c t i c e F u s i o n R e s u l t s I n t e g r a t i o n Q u i c k S t a r t G u i d e

6 Step 5: Test the Integration Your next step is to run some tests on your HL7 files with the API client and make sure your results information is displayed as you d expect in the Practice Fusion test environment before going into production. It is a good idea to be fairly thorough during this testing phase. Centers that test extensively typically have many fewer problems when they go into production. Test simple messages and test complex ones. Test ones that represent a typical result for your center as well as ones that are less-common edge cases. Even test ones that you know have errors, so that you ll get to know what kind of errors and behavior to expect in different circumstances. If the API client will be your integration approach, use the API client as documented in the Practice Fusion API Client Usage Guide. You can either copy HL7 messages into the lab client s input directory, or you ll configure your information system to create messages there. The lab client then sends the messages to the Practice Fusion lab interface. If the messages you send either to the API client to the services are valid, they will be imported and you ll be able to view the results in the test Practice Fusion account. If a message is invalid the message will be moved to the result client s error directory and the API client UI will display an error that will assist you in resolving the problem. The sections Viewing Statistics and Managing Errors in the Practice Fusion API Client Usage Guide describe how to use the client throughout this process. Expand your testing to include the following: A test where you submit a preliminary result and then update it with modified values A test where the order includes an embedded Portable Document Format (PDF) file Your support contact throughout this phase will be the Partner Implementation team; for assistance with the API client or resolving errors with your results, contact partnerimplementation@practicefusion.com. 6 P a g e P r a c t i c e F u s i o n R e s u l t s I n t e g r a t i o n Q u i c k S t a r t G u i d e

7 Step 6: Complete a Pilot Program One more level of testing needs to be done before you can go live on a large scale: completion of a pilot program. One client, of your choice, will be selected to have exclusive access to the interface. The practice will approve your request and supply you with several results to test with. If you don t have any practices that have explicitly asked to bind with you, Practice Fusion will help you find some candidates. You can show them the following YouTube video that will walk them through the binding process. 7 P a g e P r a c t i c e F u s i o n R e s u l t s I n t e g r a t i o n Q u i c k S t a r t G u i d e

8 Step 7: Go Live with Practice Fusion You ve successfully gone through a test phase and a pilot program, so you re ready to go live in production. The process of setting up your production environment is largely identical to the process of setting up your test environment, except you will send real results and the production Practice Fusion environment. If you re using the API client reconfigure your information system to write HL7 files to the production folder for input files and turn it on so it starts outputting them, and configure the API client for production as described in the Practice Fusion API Client Usage Guide. Just as when going through the testing phase, perform the steps in sections Viewing Statistics and Managing Errors in the Practice Fusion API Client Usage Guide to make sure everything is behaving as expected in the production environment. Once you are confident your messages are being processed correctly, simply check the API client UI every day to make sure the client service is still running and to look for errors. 8 P a g e P r a c t i c e F u s i o n R e s u l t s I n t e g r a t i o n Q u i c k S t a r t G u i d e