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Mittwoch, 2.07.2025
Transforming Government since 2001
After 18 years and more than $500 million spent, Saskatchewan finally has an electronic health record (EHR) system - sort of. At least it has part of one.

This week's government announcement that a "comprehensive" electronic health record for Saskatchewan residents "is complete" was a little misleading. It suggests to the casual observer that all family physicians and other healthcare providers now have computer access to a patient's complete medical history.

That's not the case. Yes, the "core" system might be in place, but the range of data is limited, and doesn't include all patient information from every health facility. Further, although 3,300 health-care providers have access to the system, they represent less than a quarter of the province's 13,700 physicians, nurses and pharmacists.

The reality is that this is just another step in a process that seems to have no discernible end. As Health Minister Dustin Duncan commented, Tuesday was more a celebration of the progress to date, and "the work doesn't end after today."

That's an understatement. After all that time and money, we're still a good way away from moving medical record keeping and sharing beyond inefficient and bulky paper files, and the faxing of information between doctors, hospitals and other medical facilities.

While eHealth Saskatchewan CEO Susan Antosh notes that electronic health records help physicians manage their workflow and medical practice - something that directly benefits patients by reducing the time they need to wait to get an appointment and improving the ability of MDs to provide better care with access to up to date case information - it's disheartening that 20 per cent of physicians are dragging their feet.

And with the use of electronic records not mandatory, it appears the patchwork system won't be soon fixed.

When Saskatchewan's former NDP government started down the electronic health record road in 1997, Google had not yet been created. Now, Google is an indespensible part of our lives, just as paper files continue to be for much of our health system.

Still, the province's announcement on Tuesday marks some progress.

The EHR Viewer website is putting a wide range of patient information at the fingertips of physicians, pharmacists and other health-care professionals. For example, doctors can call up and view patients' prescription and allergy information from pharmacies, immunization records, laboratory test results from health regions and hospital admission, discharge and transfer summaries.

As the system expands, the hope is that it will mean speedier treatment and reduced duplication. For example, it should end situations like Doctor A ordering a scan or blood test because she is unaware that Doctor B already had those tests done.

All that said, it's been only seven months since the provincial auditor expressed concern at the slow progress, cost and inefficiency of the project. Her call for better co-ordination between health agencies to get the job done is still valid.

The editorials that appear in this space represent the opinion of The StarPhoenix. They are unsigned because they do not necessarily represent the personal views of the writers. The positions taken in the editorials are arrived at through discussion among the members of the newspaper's editorial board, which operates independently from the news departments of the paper.

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Quelle/Source: The StarPhoenix, 22.01.2015

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