Bridge replaces Epic’s EpicCare Link with a vendor-agnostic affiliate provider portal that gives community physicians, skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, and referring providers secure, real-time access to their shared patients’ clinical information. Unlike EpicCare Link, which requires the host system to run Epic, Bridge connects any provider on any EHR to the Clarion clinical record through FHIR-based APIs and a zero-install web interface.
Health systems invest heavily in building physician networks and referral relationships, but the technology connecting those networks is primitive. EpicCare Link provides a web portal for community providers to view patient data in the host Epic system — but only if the host system runs Epic, and the community provider must navigate an unfamiliar interface to find the information they need. The result is that community providers rarely use the portal, referral communication falls back to fax and phone, and patients are lost to competitors who are easier to communicate with.
When a community physician receives a referral, they need the patient’s clinical summary, active problem list, current medications, recent lab results, and imaging reports. Bridge provides a clean, role-based view of the shared patient’s Clarion record through a web browser with no software installation. The view is filtered to show only the information relevant to the referring or consulting relationship, respecting information blocking rules and patient consent preferences.
Referrals should be electronic, trackable, and closed-loop. Bridge allows community providers to submit referrals electronically with clinical information attached, track referral status in real time (received, scheduled, completed, report available), and receive consultation notes and recommendations when the referral is completed. The referring provider never has to call to ask whether their patient was seen or what the specialist recommended.
Community providers need to communicate with specialists, hospitalists, and care managers about shared patients. Bridge provides secure messaging with patient context — every message is linked to a specific patient record, so the recipient can see the clinical context without searching for the chart. Message threads are preserved in the patient’s record as part of the care coordination history.
Referring providers should not have to log into a portal to check whether results are available. Bridge pushes notifications when results, reports, and discharge summaries are available for their patients. Notifications are delivered via email, SMS, or in-app alert based on provider preference. Critical results trigger immediate alerts. The provider can click directly from the notification to the relevant result in the Bridge portal.
Affiliate access management must balance ease of onboarding with security and compliance. Bridge provides a streamlined credentialing workflow: the affiliate provider’s practice submits an access request, the health system validates the provider’s identity and credentials, and role-based access is provisioned within minutes. Every portal action is logged in an immutable audit trail for compliance and security review.
Health system leaders need visibility into their referral network’s performance: which community providers refer the most patients, which referrals leak to out-of-network competitors, which specialists have the longest referral-to-appointment intervals, and which clinical services have the highest referral demand. Bridge provides network analytics dashboards that inform strategic decisions about network development, specialist recruitment, and community provider engagement.
A regional health system with 2,400 affiliated community providers deployed Bridge to replace EpicCare Link, which had achieved only 23% monthly active usage among affiliates. Bridge’s zero-install web interface and push notifications increased affiliate portal usage to 81% monthly active rate. Electronic referral submission with real-time status tracking reduced referral leakage from 34% to 7.5%, recovering an estimated $14 million in annual revenue that had been lost to out-of-network competitors. Secure messaging eliminated fax-based provider communication for connected affiliates, reducing average referral communication delay from 7 days to under 4 hours.
I am a primary care physician with privileges at two hospitals and relationships with a dozen specialists. Before Bridge, I faxed referrals and never knew if they were received. I called the specialist’s office to check on my patients and waited on hold. I logged into EpicCare Link maybe once a month when I absolutely had to. Bridge sends me a notification on my phone when my patient’s labs are ready. I can message the cardiologist directly with the patient’s chart attached. I submitted a referral this morning and by afternoon I had confirmation that my patient was scheduled for Thursday. That is how a network should work.
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