Physicians and staff will employ the intranet to support business processes. The information is provided through a variety of sources including internal databases, links to third parties and online references. The intranet can be the single source to identify the most appropriate source of information. This technology requires a searching mechanism and a back-end database or repository of information for each search. Functions that are often intranet-enabled during this phase include benefits inquiry, eligibility verification and specialist referrals.
Practices can utilize the Internet for personalized health risk assessments.
Patients will gain access to the information by providing a user name and password. An application will provide forms or information specific to a medical condition that they have, as identified by the user name. This requires changes to practice operations, but offers opportunities to redesign practice operations and achieve operating efficiencies. Physicians, payors, clinical labs and pharmacies are linked for integrated processing. Physicians can process claims and referrals, receive lab results and submit electronic prescriptions.