To find out, eHealth Saskatchewan will begin a public engagement campaign when it launches its website: www.ehealth-sk.ca on July 30.
The public will have until Aug. 31 to participate in a short online survey that will ask questions such as, "Who do you believe should have access to your electronic health record?" and "What type of services related to your electronic health record are important to you?"
The survey is being done to gauge residents' interest in accessing their own test results, or with their permission, loved one's results, said Susan Antosh, CEO of eHealth Saskatchewan.
"What would make that information meaningful and useful to you?" Antosh said.
She believes many patients want to be directly involved in their care - particularly if they have a chronic health condition.
"But I think the first thing patients are looking for is that their providers have all of the information they need," Antosh said.
Many of the building blocks are in place to integrate information from a variety of sources to create a single record for an individual that can be viewed by different health-care providers at different times - the electronic health record (EHR).
In April, the province unveiled the Saskatchewan Lab Results Repository - the latest piece of the EHR under development in the province.
The eHealth Portal allows authorized health-care providers to see a provincial view of lab results for patients, even for tests they have not ordered.
The lab repository joins other components of the provincial EHR and regional point-of-service electronic systems already in place.
The Pharmaceutical Information Program has a record of prescription drugs dispensed from all community pharmacies in Saskatchewan, and the Radiology Information System and Picture Archiving System allows clinicians to securely access digital images such as CT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds and mammography, regardless of their physical location.
"We're really focusing on adding sources and integrating all of this data together," Antosh said. "Right now, they're independent registries."
The diagnostic imaging database has more than 220 million images in it.
Daily, 50,000 lab results are added to the lab database, which has more than 10 million test results. The Lab Results Repository stores results from the Saskatchewan Disease Control Laboratory and the Regina Qu'Appelle, Sunrise, Five Hills, Saskatoon and Kelsey Trail health regions. As the remaining health regions replace their regional laboratory information systems, results will be available via the provincial database.
Currently, about 85 per cent of lab results in the province, 80 per cent of diagnostic images and all dispensed drug information are available in the eHealth Portal, which is a secure online tool developed by eHealth Saskatchewan, with the support of Canada Health Infoway .
Nurse practitioners, physicians, pharmacists and therapists are among the health professionals who can access information from the EHR.
"The information that is in there isn't part of the physician's system, but they are able to access it using the electronic health record," Antosh said.
Unlike the integrated EHR system, an electronic medical record (EMR) is a doctor's record of a patient's visit.
While eHealth Saskatchewan is mandated to create and maintain the electronic health record, it works with many independent stakeholders.
"We are continuing to work on both increasing the sources, which means working individually with different groups - either health regions or physician groups," Antosh said.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Pamela Cowan
Quelle/Source: The Regina Leader-Post, 21.07.2012
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