When receiving any referral, electronic or otherwise, healthcare organizations are responsible for taking reasonable precautions to verify the legitimacy of the source. These precautions include adherence to procedures such as avoiding personal health record disclosure without reasonable assurances that the referrer is trustworthy and is acting with patient consent.
All users must formally commit to following appropriate privacy practices prior to using Ocean by agreeing to Ocean's mandatory end-user license agreement (EULA).
Ocean Features that Help Facilitate the Validation and Accuracy of Referrer Contact Information
Although the responsibility for referrer validation ultimately lies with the referral recipient, Ocean has several features that assist healthcare organizations with identifying and validating a referrer's contact information. Unlike traditional fax or eFax which do not facilitate any checks on the validity of the sender, Ocean provides the following safeguards to help prevent referrals with inaccurate sender information:
- Confirmation of referrer contact information required with each referral
- Referrers are prompted to review and correct their contact information prior to submitting each referral.
- Mandatory referrer information required with referrals
- Referrers must enter their professional ID and billing number when applicable prior to sending. This is generally private information typically only known only by legitimate providers.
- Live updates of referrer contact information
- Referrers may update their Ocean account's contact information at any time, which will be used for future communications, even for previously-submitted referrals
- Optional federated identity provider account linkage
- Ocean can support a link between a user's Ocean accounts and a regional federated identity provider.
- Region-specific agreement enforcement
- Regional programs can specify a customized referral user agreement outlining privacy policies and usage terms, requiring referrers to agree prior to sending referrals
- Limit listings to only receive referrals from specific user categories
- Individual listings can add a restriction to ensure that only physician or Nurse Practitioner Ocean user accounts are eligible to send.
Access Restrictions for Referrers
Most referral recipients require senders/referrers to sign in with a valid Ocean account prior to sending referrals. This account is also required to view the status of the referral and any updates.
If a referral is sent without logging into an Ocean account or federated ID, access to the referral is protected and restricted under applicable privacy legislation and cannot be viewed after sending. In this case, the sender is encouraged to print or download a pdf copy of the referral.
Note: As part of our commitment to patient privacy, OceanMD reserves the right to remove an offending provider from the directory without warning and/or report breaches of patient privacy to the relevant custodian(s). This is stipulated in our End User Licence Agreement (EULA).