Health Information Exchanges
A health information exchange allows healthcare providers to access clinical information about patients from other treating facilities. Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego participates in two health information exchanges: the San Diego Beacon Health Information Exchange (SD Beacon HIE) and Care Everywhere.
The SD Beacon HIE allows healthcare providers, clinics and hospitals to access electronic patient information from all participating sites for consenting patients. When a patient is seen by a Rady Children’s provider for a diagnosis or treatment, the provider will search the health information exchange for outside records. This information should help providers make better-informed decisions and reduce the risk of patients receiving inappropriate treatment.
Watch a video about the SD Beacon HIE project.
Along with Rady Children’s, the following healthcare organizations are sharing patient health information electronically through the SD Beacon HIE:
- Children’s Primary Care Medical Group
- UC San Diego Health System
- VA San Diego Healthcare System
In the future, more doctors and healthcare provider organizations, including Rady Children's Specialists of San Diego, will be joining the Exchange. For the most current information on provider organizations participating in the SD Beacon HIE, visit www.SanDiegoBeacon.org.
Rady Children’s also participates in the Care Everywhere Health Information Exchange (Care Everywhere). Care Everywhere allows providers to search other treatment centers that use Epic, the electronic medical record system used at Rady Children’s.
View treatment centers participating in Care Everywhere by state.
What Does This Mean for Patients?
Your child’s doctors will be able to access medication lists, reported allergies, laboratory and radiology results, discharge summaries, history and physicals, progress notes, visits to other health care facilities and immunization records. Your child’s electronic health information will be accessible only to doctors and health care personnel who are providing his or her medical care. Your child’s electronic health information will only be stored within each treating provider’s secure electronic medical record system. If you have not yet declared your preference about sharing your child’s health information, the Exchange will release your child’s health information only if your child is having an emergency.
When your child is seen at a Rady Children’s clinical site, you will be given the option to either:
- Share your child’s personal health information in all clinical encounters
- Only share your child’s personal health information in clinical encounters where the provider deems that your child is having an emergency, OR
- Never share your child’s personal health information, even in an emergency
Your consent to share your child’s personal health information will apply to both the SD Beacon Exchange and Care Everywhere.
If you consent to share your child’s personal health information, your child’s information will be shared with:
- Providers who are treating your child
- The San Diego Immunization Registry
- San Diego County Public Health services as mandated by federal and state laws
Safe and Secure
Your child’s electronic health information will be transmitted in a safe and secure manner. The SD Beacon HIE will only store your child’s identifying information and some markers about where your child has received care. The Exchange will not store any clinical information about your child.
Notifying Your Provider
- If your child has received care from another facility, please inform your provider at Rady Children’s, Children's Primary Care Medical Group or Rady Children's Specialists of San Diego.
- If you take your child to another healthcare facility, please inform them of any of your child’s visits to Rady Children’s, Children's Primary Care Medical Group or Rady Children's Specialists of San Diego.
