Contributed by Dr. Steven Klassen, Family Physician, Thunder Bay, ON and OntarioMD Peer Leader
Recently, I accepted a
One of the tools I have come to cherish in such encounters is OLIS. Subtly integrated within my EMR, in a matter of a couple of clicks I am in the position to query the database for the patient in front of me. On verbal consent from this septuagenarian, I launched digital minions to fetch the last ten years of his labs. Moments later another click of a button allows me to download the retrieved treasure trove into my EMR. Less than a minute later I am pointing to a graph generated by my EMR of his hemoglobin and asking him, “ What happened to you at this dramatic dip in February 2016.?” Visibly impressed, he recalls, “Oh that is when I had my stroke and was given clot busters”. In just minutes, I was able to get a better picture of trends and perspectives that improved my ability to care for this patient without having to send him for duplicate lab tests.
Later, my questions about his diabetes were met with firm denial, yet his previous family doctor had already ordered a Hb A1c in 2015 which was reported at 6.7%. A picture of denial was emerging. The graph of his LDL cholesterol shows the classic swings of someone at one time started on a statin who later stops it only to be started again. In this case, the statin had evidently been stopped approximately a year before his stroke but promptly restarted in February 2017 fitting
Dr. Steven Klassen, Family Physician, Thunder Bay, ON and OntarioMD Peer Leader