As Canadians, we take pride in our free health care. Care professionals—each with their own specializations, workflows and patients—form the foundation that we all depend on. But each and every one of these professionals share a single problem: How can we improve the care of our patients?
One of the issues of Canadian healthcare today is the fragmentation of medical information across the care continuum. Simply put, your medical information differs from one care facility to another. It is rare that even a single facility will have all the information necessary for a care provider to provide optimal care for you, let alone an entire nation. This leads to inefficiencies, test duplication, and medical errors that manifest themselves into exceedingly long wait times, unnecessary costs that taxpayers bear the brunt of, and worst of all, patient deaths caused by medical errors that could have otherwise been prevented.
For example, let’s assume you tore a muscle in your leg that requires surgery. You’re admitted to the hospital and successfully complete the procedure, but your doctor strongly recommends physical therapy to build back the muscle you’ve lost. He refers you to his physical therapist and you set up an appointment with them. Since this is your first time at this physical therapy facility, you once again need to write down your personal information, reason for visit, levels of pain, etc. This seemingly simple issue is magnified by each patient per facility, leading to a series of subsequent problems that inflate the cost of medical care.
A government initiative in Alberta called Connect Care aims to bridge patient medical information from one care facility to another through EHRs (electronic health records) and EMRs (electronic medical records). EHRs and EMRs streamline processes and improve the workflow for doctors, nurses, physical therapists or other care professionals, addressing patients faster (thereby reducing wait times) or improving their quality of care.
Issues of Canadian healthcare affect all stakeholders of a care facility including patients, care providers, medical executives, and government bodies. Even the workflow for care providers requires numerous unnecessary steps to pass medical information from one facility to the next. It is still common today to see doctors type their recommendations onto the computer, print it, and fax the document to another facility. Then, a staff member takes the document and types it into their own electronic records. Electronic records, especially by today’s standards, should have built-in features to send and receive information directly to another record system in a secure manner.
Fragmentation of patient medical information is the crux of the Canadian medical system. Healthcare professionals desperately need the tools to address these problems sooner rather than later. Thankfully, issues in Canadian healthcare are being solved by industry-leading medical software like AccessEMR.
Curious as to what EMRs and EHRs are? Follow this link to learn more!