A pilot program in place at Mental Health Centre Penetanguishene (MHCP) is designed to make patient information more accessible to health-care providers – no matter where they’re located.
Doorways is the name of the partnership between Community Care Information Management, eHealth Ontario and four participating Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) – North Simcoe Muskoka, Champlain, North East and North West.
“They wanted to establish a portal framework to make information more readily accessible to their health-service providers in their communities,” project manager Dan Meraw told The Mirror. “They wanted a way to convey this information so it could be organized and made easier and more efficient.”
Participating in the pilot project are eight hospitals – two in each LHIN – including MHCP and Orillia’s Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital. Initially, the focus has been on patients with conditions involving mental health or addiction.
Kristi Lalonde, communications officer at MHCP, said the implementation of the program has been successful.
“Our patients and staff have both been involved, and the reception has been positive,” she said. “MHCP is a leader of specialized mental health care in the region, and (Doorways) allowed us an opportunity to collaborate with three additional regions. This experience will be of benefit to MHCP as it moves forward with its own e-health initiatives.”
Lalonde noted the project has provided staff with a new opportunity to work together and strengthen relationships with local community-based partners, but acknowledged there were a few kinks that required ironing out.
“With any new initiative, challenges are expected since it often introduces change,” she said. “But with good communication and collaboration, these were addressed and resolved.”
MHCP president and CEO Carol Lambie added they are very pleased to be involved in this initiative: “(It) provides us with an opportunity to collaborate with other providers and pilot a leading technology, all with a focus of better serving our patients and clients.”
Meraw likened the program to having a Blockbuster card, in that a customer can rent a movie from one location, but another location can still access the customer’s account.
“Obviously, privacy and security are very key to a project like this, particularly because it’s mental-health data,” he said.
Access to the portal is strictly controlled. Registered medical personnel are required to give a user ID and password, as well as a MyGuard card specific to an individual user ID. In addition, access is limited to a specific Internet protocol (IP) address, which means the user must be at a specific location when accessing the information.
The aim of the program, he said, is to get the right information to the right people at the right time.
“There is a tremendous amount of time being saved by the providers. If you go into a mental-health office and that provider wants to access your information from another provider, they have to contact them, get consent, call, and wait for the information to get faxed over. That can take anywhere from three to five days,” he said. “Now, they just log into the portal and … the information is there instantaneously.
“Whether you’re at a hospital, community health centre or clinic, it improves the decision making for diagnosing and patient treatment. You can imagine the impact to patient safety if somebody comes into the ER in crisis.”
Meraw said the program has received a positive response to date.
“This project is laying the foundation for where we ultimately want to get to in 2015, which is a full electronic medical record for every Ontarian. We are not going to get there overnight, (but) this is a good first step.”
The portal will be operational through to the end of March 2011. After that, Meraw said, participating health-care providers are expected to provide Doorways with feedback in an effort to improve the program.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Nicole Million
Quelle/Source: Simcoe, 11.01.2011
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