Month: May 2019

3 Reasons to Attend OntarioMD’s EMR: Every Step Conference in Ottawa

Posted on by Neil Faba

OntarioMD’s EMR: Every Step Conference returns to Ottawa on June 13, 2019. A lot has changed in the health care sector since our last Ottawa conference in 2017. The provincial government has announced a renewed focus on integrated, patient-centred care, driven by EMRs and digital health tools, and led by Ontario Health Teams. We’ve planned a day of learning and networking designed to help clinicians and other stakeholders make sense of it all.

Register by Friday, May 17 to save 15% with our early bird rate!

With a full day of learning that’s CME-accredited for physicians, access to vendors for EMR training, information on the latest practice technology, and opportunities to meet with OntarioMD Peer Leaders onsite, there are so many reasons to attend the EMR: Every Step Conference. Here are just three.

#1: Harness the Power of EMRs for Mental Health and Addiction Care

Mental health and addiction care are increasingly important focal points in primary care practice, and your EMR can play a vital role in helping you offer responsive, coordinated care to patients with mental health concerns. In a new session, titled Using An EMR to Communicate Between Psychiatry, Primary Care and Mental Health Patients and Improve Care, psychiatrist Dr. Hugues Richard will walk through how the EMR is a clinically valuable tool for communicating with staff, treatment teams and patients. The session will demonstrate how quality of care for patients with mental health and addiction issues is improved by using EMR features such as reminders and the CPP.

#2: Better Understand the Patient Perspective

Julie Drury, Chair of the Ontario Health Minister’s Patient and Family Advisory Council, returns to the EMR: Every Step Conference to deliver the morning keynote address. This year, she’ll lead a panel discussion with voices representing government, hospital, primary care physician and patient perspectives to discuss the challenges and opportunities of increasing patient access to their electronic medical information.

#3: Discover How to Work Even More Efficiently with Your EMR

The increasing number of EMR-integrated digital health tools available hold tremendous promise for improving the patient experience and health outcomes. But they’re only right for your practice if they can help you meet your unique clinical goals. An EMR Progress Assessment (EPA) is a quick and easy way to understand your current EMR use, what else you want to do with health care technology, and which tools can help you do that. The EPA is an OntarioMD-designed online self-assessment tool that asks you a series of questions about how you’re using EMRs and technology in your practice, and helps you understand what else is available. Want to improve appointment scheduling? Document management? How about Chronic Disease Management? Sign up to complete an EPA at the conference when you register for the event and OntarioMD staff can help steer you in the right direction.

We look forward to having you join us on June 13 at the Brookstreet Hotel in Ottawa for OntarioMD’s EMR: Every Step Conference. Visit the conference website to register today!

Track Your EMR Improvements with an OntarioMD EMR Progress Assessment

Posted on by ontariomd

If you’re using an OntarioMD-certified electronic medical record (EMR) in your practice, you’re one of approximately 17,000 primary care clinicians in Ontario who’ve integrated this valuable patient management tool into your workflow. You’ve seen how your EMR makes your work better, more efficient – and has a direct impact on your patients’ health.

You’re entering patient data into your EMR. You may be capitalizing on the power of that data to run preventive care reports for more proactive care. And speaking of proactive care, perhaps you’re one of almost 10,000 clinicians getting hospital discharge summaries and other reports to your EMR through Health Report Manager (HRM). That’s the power of your EMR – and we know most Ontario primary care clinicians are discovering that power.

But are you really using your EMR to its fullest potential? Do you understand what else you could be doing with it to reach your practice goals? If you’re not sure, OntarioMD can help you. Our EMR Progress Assessment (EPA) is an online self-assessment tool designed to help you measure your current EMR use, help you prioritize what else you want to do with your EMR, and track improvements in your EMR use over time. With EPA results at your disposal, you can easily determine what you’re doing well with your EMR, and how else you could be using the technology for better practice management and improved patient care.

Your EPA results can also help us help you – which is what we’re here to do. With your EPA results as a guide, OntarioMD practice advisors can customize a hands-on support plan that works for your practice. We know not all health care technology is right for all clinicians. The more insight we have on what you want to do, the more we can do to help you get there.

The EPA and EPEP in action

Want to better understand the EPA in action? A research paper from JMIR Human Factors uses real-life case studies to illustrate how OntarioMD’s EMR Practice Enhancement Program (EPEP) helps clinicians make better use of the patient data in their EMR, improve practice workflows and meet practice clinical goals. In most cases, EPEP engagements start and end with an EPA as an essential component of the EPEP team’s analysis and work. EPA results help reveal how a clinician’s EMR knowledge, data quality and practice efficiency improve as a result of taking advantage of OntarioMD’s complimentary EPEP support.

Consider the case of Dr. F, who the EPEP team first met within 2016. At the time, an EPA and initial analysis revealed that the practice wasn’t entering data consistently into the EMR – which meant they couldn’t properly measure the quality of care they provided. Over several months, the practice and EPEP team focused on ways Dr. F’s practice could use their EMR to better capture important preventive care and diabetes data – and act on it for more responsive patient care.

An EPA and data analysis conducted six months after the engagement began showed improvement in EMR use and data quality. Another check-in more than a year later showed even more dramatic – and sustained – improvements.

Data Quality review – Dr. F

Contact us. We’re here to help!

You’ve invested a lot of time and money into adopting an EMR and building workflows around it. And we know that you probably want to do more with it. But you can’t improve what you can’t measure and track. That’s where an EPA comes in. Complete an EPA today to get a clearer picture of what you’re doing right with your EMR – and what else you could be doing with it. Find out more at https://www.ontariomd.ca/products-and-services/emr-practice-enhancement-program/emr-progress-assessment or contact us at support@ontariomd.com.