The hospital’s plan to go paperless will help it line up it’s technology standards with eHealth Ontario initiatives, but it won’t get any financial help from the provincially-funded agency.
Though eHealth is in the business of helping health care providers communicate and share patient information electronically -- something the hospital recently announced it will spend more than $50 million to do -- it steers clear of hospitals. As the agency helps more physicians, labs and other health-related workers use technology better, it’s up to the hospital to keep up.
Nancy Martin-Ronson, chief nursing executive and information officer at the hospital, says the eHealth initiatives line-up closely with the work the hospital is planning over the next decade, which involves swapping a mixture of paper-based and digital patient information for a completely electronic approach.
It has to, she says.
“This is going to make sure we can partner with eHealth,” she says. “We set up here, then we can receive and share data with their initiatives. If you don’t have electronic data to share, you can’t be a part of it.”
In order to ensure hospital staff and other community health care workers are on the same page, the hospital will have to work closely with agency, she says.
The need for the hospital to move to an all-electric system was identified in strategic plan consultations, Accreditation Canada results and a staff and physician satisfaction survey.
Hospital CEO Ken Tremblay says technology-wise, the Peterborough Regional Health Centre is behind the mark compared to some other hospitals.
According to eHealth, many other health care providers have also already made the switch, with two out of three Ontarians now having an electronic medial record and six out of 10 physicians using electronic medial records in their practice.
The hospital plans to start implementing electronic patient records within all areas of the hospital in 2016.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sarah Frank
Quelle/Source: MyKawartha, 02.07.2013
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