How Family Physicians and Other Providers Can Connect
Subscribers to AAFP Physicians Direct will be able to securely exchange messages with any other provider on the Surescripts Network for Clinical Interoperability. Participants on the Surescripts network will also be able to send message alerts to any other provider, including non-subscribers. Message recipients will retrieve messages from a secure Web page within the Physicians Direct portal and reply to messages for free.

AAFP Physicians Direct will be offered as a subscription service for $15 per physician user per month. Subscribers will not be limited in the number of messages they can send through the secure portal.

"We are pleased to offer a digital solution to improve communication among primary care physicians,
subspecialists and other healthcare providers," said Steven Waldren, MD, director of the AAFP Center for Health IT.

"AAFP Physicians Direct will make slow, fragmented and cumbersome patient referrals and follow-up care a thing of the past." "In four short months, the ability of one doctor to communicate and share information with another has been redefined," said Cris Ross, executive vice president of Surescripts.

Ross said they expect to be beta testing the network in March and that by the first week of April they hope to be able to provide sign up for the network at the AAFP website. He said they expect to be live in the second quarter of this year, with a target of May.

"The days of family physicians having to fax or mail or hand deliver patient files to specialists are over," he added. "For less money than what it costs to provide basic cable to patients in their waiting room, clinical interoperability will enable family physicians to share clinical information with more providers in a more efficient and effective way than ever before. Today's announcement represents a giant leap toward providing the right information to the right provider at the right time."

Family physicians have the option of connecting to the Surescripts network through the new AAFP Web portal as well as some of the leading electronic health record systems.

Click here more information on AAFP Physicians Direct.