The arrival of the Physician Office Integration program means the records of more than 150,000 patients will follow them almost anywhere they seek treatment in Northwestern Ontario, fed directly from the region’s 12 hospitals to more than 25 area clinics, representing 168 physicians and nurse practitioners.
Greg Reed, president and CEO of eHealth Ontario, said while Northwestern Ontario has led the way in electronic health records in Ontario, doctors and hospitals operated on different software systems, which made integration next to impossible until recently.
“It means if you come into the hospital and get a test, you could drive right to that doctor’s office and they’ll already have your test results,” he said. “It’s a huge convenience as well.”
It will also improve efficiency and cut down on unnecessary delays for patients trying to see specialists, he added.
“In Ontario, something like one-third of appointments with specialists happen before the specialist has the test results because they’re waiting for the envelope to arrive," Reed said.
"It takes three weeks. When test results are available to the specialist immediately, it means that instead of waiting three weeks to see a specialist, your doctor can set up a meeting two days from now … and you can get the right care faster."
Pediatrician Theresa Bruni, pointing to a stack of 5,000 pieces of paper that she would have to go through annually under the old system of paper records, said safe, secure electronic records are a natural evolution, especially in the vastness that is Northwestern Ontario.
“Many of our patients are from the regions, so their information is coming to us (now) just as quickly as if it was being generated at Thunder Bay Regional,” Bruni said, adding the program also flags abnormal results, making diagnosis and treatment that much easier.
The big benefit is patient care, she said.
“We’ve always had an electronic medical record at the hospital. But our patients are not just cared for in the hospital. They come see us in our office, they go to their community hospital in their city. The benefit now is those results of blood work and lab tests are available to us instantaneously.
“So there’s not that delay in getting that paper record sent from their hospital or from Thunder Bay Regional sent to my office, reviewed by me and then scanned into their chat,” Bruni said.
According to statistics provided by eHealth Ontario, 21,000 patient reports are transmitted each month via the Physician Office Integration program – which went live in the fall – eliminating 1,100 hours of clinical administrative work spent filing, scanning and distributing records.
Northwest LHIN CEO Laura Kokochiski said the expansion of the project, which was paid for partly through a $376,000 provided by eHealth Ontario, said it makes a better system all around for everyone.
“It’s not about creating new health records, it’s about how health records can work more effectively,” she said.
Bruce Sutton, the chief information officer at both city hospitals, said it wasn’t easy integrating everyone’s systems together.
“We had to make an application that basically takes the data and maps it accordingly. It’s pretty complex to do that. We had staff hired to plan that out and work it out with the various vendors,” Sutton said.
Privacy is always a huge concern, and Sutton said they’ve taken every precaution, implementing password protected access and ensuring only those authorized to view the records can do so.
He stopped short of saying they are impenetrable.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said. “No system is foolproof. But we do pretty good here.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Leith Dunick
Quelle/Source: Tb News Watch, 07.01.2011
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