Prompted by the Papal visit to Philadelphia in September 2015, HealthShare Exchange (HSX) established the Urgent Patient Activity Liason Service (uPAL) to benefit emergency responders and loved ones during a large-scale event. The service leverages hospital feeds to create a database of locations for patients who have arrived for care at a HSX-member area hospital. While the service is not open for the public, it does open access to outside organizations such as The American Red Cross and The City of Philadelphia.
Service Descriptions
Urgent Patient Activity Liaison Service (uPAL)
The Urgent Patient Activity Liaison service (uPAL) is a patient locator capability. For this resource, HSX uses admission discharge transfer (ADT) data feeds from its member hospitals as a database of locations for patients who have arrived for or completed care at regional hospitals. When HSX member hospitals receive an inquiry seeking information on one or more patients who may have received medical care, they can query HSX for information on where patients may have entered the regional healthcare system to locate these patients. This service is only utilized in times of crisis scenarios to assist both families and authorities.