When the Referral and Epicrisis functionality has been deployed,
- documents can be retrieved from the Patient Data Repository to support patient care regardless of where the patient is being treated
- data is easier to access also by others than the original sender and recipient the archiving obligation of the controller is met
- referral and epicrisis documents can be viewed by citizens in MyKanta.
Entering of referral and epicrisis views
Referrals and epicrises are entered in the Patient Data Repository in national views LÄH and PAL. With referrals, consultations or epicrises within the organisation, no LÄH or PAL views are used, but, for example, the view according to the speciality of the referring unit shall be used instead.
Archiving of the referral and/or epicrisis in the Patient Data Repository does not replace the current integrations or functional referral-epicrisis processes between the referee and recipient. The referral and/or epicrisis will still be forwarded to another healthcare unit via the current referral-epicrisis systems according to the effective practices.
More detailed information about the referral and epicrisis views and entries is available in Finnish and Swedish.
Referrals and epicrises in MyKanta
Referrals can be viewed in MyKanta on their own page in the Health data section. As the same referral is archived by the referring and receiving organisation, the citizen will always see the latest version of the referral in MyKanta.
An epicrisis is linked to the referral in MyKanta whenever possible. If an epicrisis is not linked to any referral, it can be seen in the section “Epicrises with no linked referral”. Also with respect to epicrises, the latest archived version is always shown to the citizen if the epicrisis has been archived by the referring and the receiving organisation.
Impacts of refusals to share data on referrals and epicrises
Citizens can refuse to share their referral or epicrisis data. The refusal can apply to an individual appointment or service provider. This prevents sharing of data from the Patient Data Repository also with another party taking part in the patient care.
However, a refusal to share data, which has been set up in Kanta, does not automatically prevent parties taking part in patient care from sharing referrals and epicrises via the referral systems in order to make sure that the data required for patient care is available to the parties attending to patient care. Healthcare data must not be shared even in the referral systems without the patient’s knowledge.