Table 2: Strategic Planning for “VITALCONNECT” program
Vision
Shared Health Records
Personal Health Portal (PHP)
e-Prescribing in th Pharmaceutical Information System (PIS)
Laboratory Integration/Normalization
Cross Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS)
e-Referral
Pharmacy Practice Management Systems
Mission
To support the complete clinical and family care team to provide a high quality care with reducing cost, and ensuring timely interventions by its highly approachable application such as EHRs (Electronic Health Record system)
Values
Excellence
Integrity
Innovation
Leadership
Teamwork and Collaboration Strategic Goal
Quality
Access
Affordability
Priorities
To enable patients to take more responsibility for their own health by giving them the tools to control their conditions. The EHRs will connect patients, families, caregivers and care teams to ensure high quality care with reducing cost in the home.
It will provide access to remote patient monitoring data records, and allows patients for timely interventions by the care team that reduce costly hospital readmissions and ER visits.
Foundation
Privacy and Security
Data Standards and Quality
Technology
Partnership/Collaboration
2) Detailed Application System of “VITALCONNECT” program
2.1. Challenges / Issues
Is Canada Health Care System going to be digital? A Special Report by Richard Alvarez, President & CEO, Canada Health Infoway Inc. indicates a
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) states that in order to realize meaningful use of the EHR technology, healthcare providers are obliged to apply the technology in a approach that enriches quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare delivery; ebbs healthcare inconsistencies; involves patients and families; enriches care coordination; expands population and public health; and guarantees sufficient privacy and security guards for personal health information. (U.S Department of Health and
The main goals of the EHR mandate was to correct healthcare coordination amount the healthcare team of hospitals, physicians, and the lab. It is to ensure that private
EHRs help your doctors coordinate your care and protect your safety - Since all my information as a patient is contained in the EHR system all of my doctors know what medications I am taking, whether it will interact with other medication, if I am allergic to any medication or if a particular drug did not work out for me in the past. This saves me from any risk of the wrong medication being prescribed and the cost of talking medication that does not work for me.
doc.com faces a series of risks that could potentially undermine the success of the venture. The success of doc.com hinges on its adoption as a single, unified system for the entire province. Nova Scotia’s attempt to implement a shared EMR system that ultimately resulted in doctors choosing between three incompatible systems. After a $39 million investment, doctors were forced to fax records to transfer them between systems (Colbert, 2016). A similar fate could befall Ontario if adoption is not
EHR was created to have a technical way to securely exchange private and personal medical health information in hopes to improve the quality of care, decrease medical errors, limiting paper use, reduction of health care cost, and increasing a person access to affordable health care. A mandate was created for EHR stating that health records can be accessible to all facilities with patients having the capability to access their own health records at any time. Ameliorating the quality and convenience of care given to a patient, allow for cost saving measures, engage the patient and family to participate in their care, improve accuracy of medical diagnosis, and enhance the efficiency of the overall outcome of the patients’ health.
EHR is an electronic version of a patient’s chart that can be distributed among all the healthcare providers, agencies, and many facilities. As one of the articles states “the benefits of an electronic health record include a gain in healthcare efficiencies, large gains in quality and safety, and lower healthcare costs for consumers.” Individuals in EHR practices provides better quality care and outcomes, improves patient safety, and anybody benefits from it “regardless of their insurance status, whether privately insured, uninsured, or covered by Medicare or Medicaid.” As you mentioning great aspect of controlling costs is documentation of patient care. The care coordinator who deals mostly with insurances at the facility I work at, she relies
Another beneficial feature of EHR systems is that they allow different authorized professionals to access your information from anywhere at any point in time. If a patient checks into the Emergency Room, is moved to Radiology for imaging, then moved to Orthopedics for surgery and finally placed in a bed for recovery, each individual throughout that process will have access to that patient’s medical records without having to communicate with each department. This fosters an
Uptake of health information technologies has been limited and varies widely across Canada. According to the 2010 National Physician Survey, about one-third of Canadian physicians were using a combination of paper and electronic records, and 16% were using only electronic records. (2) The Canadian health care system has faced challenges in recent years due to various factors, including changes in the way services are delivered, fiscal constraints, the aging of the baby boom generation, and the high cost of new technology. (1) Adding to this is the size of Canada. Managing a complex, interdependent $100 billion-plus health business requires strong communication throughout the country. (17) Without an integrated IT infostructure, Canada struggles to meet the increasing demands of all its stakeholders to deliver superior care at a sustainable cost. (17)
An EHR system makes it much easier to record and report data, increasing the likelihood of meeting quality
One pro of the EHR is that it makes accessing patient information faster since you can easily bring it up on a computer as opposed to going through physical copies. This allows patients to be dealt with properly according to their records. While the EHR has many benefits, the one pitfall is that since all this data is made so accessible, patient information is vulnerable to attack by hackers and those who misuse their authorized access to such information. This puts patients at risk of this information were to be exposed. This is a considerable risk when patients' lives are at stake. EHRs can improve patient health literacy by making information readily assessable to patients to help them make well informed health care decisions. It also empowered patients to take control in managing some clinical conditions that requires skills needed to take care of themselves (Watson,
Access to patient’s medical history – the care provider can access the patient’s medical history with just a few clicks rather than sorting through pages of a file. This has reduced time spent on extracting the information and expedites the care given. The ability to give quick care has reduced medical errors.
To obtain an opportunity to observe a clinical setting in order to gain healthcare related experience and patient interaction skills.
The definition of the EHR is a place in which patient records are created, stored and retrieved. Most professionals have incorporated them into their practice. EHR’s are known to have allowed the sharing of information between a patients’ caregivers in an increased amount of time. They increase safety and efficiency in the clinical setting by delivering legible information.
It can also position nurses to be more proactive by reaching out the patients. With the EHR there is a thing called PHR, which is Person Health Record. Patients fill in their own information and it’s stored in the computers. There is also Tethered or Connected PHR’s that are linked to specific healthcare organizations EHR system and the patient can access it through a secure portal(Jamoom, 2012). With the EHRs and PHRs patients are more active in their illness which makes them feel as if they are in control of it, which is a huge plus for providers.