The second installment in the Women in Digital Health series features Elizabeth Keller, Vice-President Product Strategy and Delivery.
Author: ontariomd
Don’t Miss Your Chance to Attend the Toronto EMR: Every Step Conference!
By Peter Hamer, Executive Director, Ottawa Valley Family Health Team and OntarioMD Clinic Manager Peer Leader
There are less than two weeks left until Canada’s largest EMR conference series comes back to Toronto. If you’re a clinician who is using EMRs and digital health solutions, or you’re interested in learning more about the value of the technology for your practice, you need to register now to attend OntarioMD’s EMR: Every Step Conference on Thursday, September 27.
I’ve attended and presented at the EMR: Every Step Conference since the first one back in 2012, and I’ve connected with thousands of clinicians and other health care professionals and digital health stakeholders who have agreed that there are many good reasons to make time in their schedule for this annual event. The conference offers a full day of CME-accredited content across 20 educational sessions, EMR workshops, a vendor showcase and two keynote addresses. The ability to access this much practical knowledge and CME credits for a registration fee of just $160 ($100 for students) is virtually unmatched anywhere else.
EMR: Every Step Conference content is provided by clinicians, for clinicians. The conference abstract process for this event began in the spring, when a clinician review committee analyzed and evaluated dozens of submitted abstracts to select the ones they knew would offer the best clinical value to their colleagues.
The Conference Agenda
You can view the full agenda for our Toronto EMR: Every Step Conference agenda here, including session summaries and speaker details. The content falls into four streams:
- Clinical Enhancements (Opioid Management, Optimizing EMR for cancer screenings, etc.)
- Digital Health (ebooking, eConsult, etc.)
- EMR Management (Clinic Manager Perspective on EMR, Practical Quality Improvements, etc.)
- OntarioMD Products and Services (EMR Dashboard, Privacy and Security, etc.)
In addition to the great knowledge-building educational sessions, we’re proud to offer clinicians and their staff a variety of training opportunities to learn more about how their EMR can work for their unique practice needs:
- Learn tips and tricks from your EMR vendor in the EMR Workshops
- Get EMR-focused mentorship from Physician, Clinic Manager and Nurse Peer Leaders by signing up for one-on-one Peer Leader Engagements
- Take the opportunity to complete an EMR Progress Assessment to see what level of EMR use you’re currently at
- Learn about OntarioMD’s Privacy and Security Training Module, and why successful completion of this online training module is one of the necessary requirements for access to some of Ontario’s digital health assets, including the electronic health record systems.
For the first time ever, the upcoming OntarioMD EMR: Every Step Conference will feature two keynote addresses.
Our morning keynote will feature Julie Drury, Chair of the Minister’s Patient and Family Advisory Council, She will deliver an address on the importance of including the patient perspective in digital health.
Our closing keynote will be delivered by Dr. Julielynn Wong, internationally recognized as a 3D printing, drone, robotics, telemedicine and digital health pioneer who uses cutting-edge technology to deliver healthcare solutions across diverse environments. Her presentation is titled “From Fax Machine to 3D Printers: Digital Health at Warp Speed.”
Whether you’re a new EMR user, or your practice has been connected for many years, the Toronto EMR: Every Step Conference will help you understand the latest trends and innovations in digital health and determine how this game-changing technology and support from OntarioMD can help you meet your unique practice needs.
Limited conference registration spots remain. Register Today!
Digital health helped me breathe again!
Contributed by Surya Qarin, OntarioMD Practice Management Assistant
Anyone that has known me long enough knows I have spent much of my life in and out of hospitals – and that’s not because the doctors are cute. As a matter of fact, Etobicoke General’s nurses and I are on a first name basis now, and they know exactly which vein works best when drawing blood, and which ones “hide.”
As a child, I was hospitalized every other week for severe asthma. It seemed to subside after I turned 12… at least I thought it did. I didn’t even think asthma was a real issue for adults. I’d always been told people outgrow it. But this is not the case: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 9.7% of women aged 18 or older have asthma and are more likely to die of asthma than men. Adults are also four times more likely to die of asthma than children. Asthma Canada stats show that up to 250,000 Canadians are living with severe asthma.
Asthma returned to my life a few years ago, as a moderate condition. I had become more active, believing it would help with my other health issues (which it did). As long as I took my puffers before and after working out, I would not have any issues with breathing.
Then flu season hit, and I got sick a few times between December 2016 and February 2017. Those who know me understand my strong belief that I am super woman and do not like to complain about being sick or having “a little cold.” Unfortunately, this was not just a small cold: it had turned from a cold, to bronchitis, to full blown pneumonia by April 2017. Even then, I still refused to see a doctor. One day, on my drive home from work, I felt a sharp chest pain, and something didn’t seem right. I was not just having a little difficulty while breathing as I had been the last few months. I actually could not breathe.
Gasping for air, I pulled over, sent a quick text to my sister and drove to Humber River Hospital. There, I realized how difficult it would be for me to get my medical records: My family doctor was not affiliated with the hospital, nor was Etobicoke General. They were, however, able to pull my past drug history from my pharmacy and go based off that information. I was stabilized and discharged.
A few days later, my breathing difficulties returned. I went into Etobicoke General, and they were able to pull my history right away and admit me to hospital within the hour. Turns out my lungs had started shutting down due to the pneumonia and asthma, and as it was high-humidity and high-allergy season, being outside did not help me. During my stay in the hospital, my family doctor received hospital reports via Health Report Manager (HRM) and he was kept updated on my condition, as were my respirologist and cardiologist.
After a few weeks of recovery, I thought all was well. However, I caught a “cold” again in October, and this time things deteriorated fast! I ended up in hospital yet again. My respirologist was made aware of my condition in real time via the hospital’s EMR and was able to work with the other respirologist on duty and doctors working on my case to provide the best course of treatment given my history. My current spirometry test results were easily available for the clinicians, and the instant connectivity between those on my medical team helped improve my care and recovery process.
Once again, my family doctor’s ability to receive hospital reports to his EMR through HRM enabled him to follow-up accordingly, ensure I had the contacts I needed for my health, schedule regular testing, and most importantly, help ensure that I didn’t end up in the hospital again. I’m happy to say that I have not been hospitalized overnight since November of 2017.
As a member of the team at OntarioMD, I help clinicians across the province understand the value that EMRs and digital health tools such as HRM can bring to their practice and the quality of patient care they’re able to provide. But being a patient in the health care system has really demonstrated the importance of these tools to me first-hand. If you’re a clinician who has questions about optimizing your EMR use, or you want to connect to HRM or the wide range of other digital health tools in Ontario, contact OntarioMD at support@ontariomd.com.
Women in Digital Health – Sarah Hutchison
As 2018’s graduates enter the workforce, OntarioMD would like to congratulate everyone and provide a perspective to women considering a career in digital health and health informatics. Our new Women in Digital Health vlog (video blog posts) series highlights women leaders at OntarioMD who chose a career dedicated to digital health with the ultimate goals of improving patient care and making Ontario’s health care system more efficient. They talk about their passion, career paths and provide advice to new grads and women already in the health care sector. Watch the first vlog featuring OntarioMD Chief Executive Officer, Sarah Hutchison.
I hate paperwork!
Submitted by Dr. John Crosby
I am a family physician in Cambridge with 1,400 patients serving 2 nursing homes in an 18-physician family health team with 30,000 patients in total. I have spent 26 years as a physician, with 20 years’ experience as an emergency physician.
A recent survey in the Medical Post listed paperwork as the biggest stressor for physicians. Luckily for me, paperwork is a thing of the past as we have eliminated paper coming from hospitals and specialty clinics and gone digital using Health Report Manager (HRM). It was easy to implement, and both my office manager and I have found that it saves us time to focus on delivering better patient care.
HRM is simple to implement as OntarioMD does all the work in helping to get your practice set up. OntarioMD came into my practice to sign subscription and user agreements and TELUS helped with the set-up of the system. Report types such as imaging, emergency, specialist and other hospital reports automatically downloaded into our EMR system. This eliminated the need to store paper reports. If I were to get an MRI report showing a brain tumour, I can quickly call the patient in and refer them to a specialist.
I can also access lab results through my EMR via the Ontario Laboratories Information System (OLIS). I simply login into my computer and click on lab reports to view any abnormal patient results. If a patient’s potassium level comes back low, I can simply tell my office manager to tell they will need to change their diet or take certain medications.
One of the newer digital health tools I’ve connected to is eConsult. I can send a message and documentation to a specialist anywhere in Ontario without having to send my patient for an in-person visit. This means faster advice, usually within a couple of days, I can use for my patient who doesn’t have to wait months to benefit from a specialist’s advice.
These tasks are all done without paper. Prior to using an EMR, HRM, OLIS and eConsult, receiving, sending and viewing patient health information was tedious and time consuming. In the past, all my reports were mailed or faxed. We would have to physically travel to the hospital and pick up the paper reports daily. Then the paper report was scanned, the patient’s file had to be opened and the report dragged there. Then my office manager would mark it as seen by me.
With HRM, I see a patient’s report as soon as it downloads. With a couple of clicks, the information is posted into the patient’s chart. I no longer need to go to the hospital and wait for mail and faxes. Now I can receive specialist reports the same day of the patient’s visit all thanks to HRM. HRM also sends me eNotifications so I know when my patients were in the hospital and know that I can expect hospital reports to follow.
My practice is more efficient all thanks to my EMR and other digital health tools like HRM. They have benefitted my practice by:
- Enabling me to find patient information quickly
- Allowing me to spot trends and abnormalities
- Providing faster patient follow-ups
- Accessing specialist advice and getting responses sooner
- Enabling more time spent on patient care
- Creating workflow efficiencies
- Less time spent on administrative and operational tasks
Physicians and other clinicians need digital health tools to practice medicine today. They really need the services of OntarioMD to advise them on how to go digital. You can start with one digital service and OntarioMD will help you integrate it into your workflow. Or, you can start with multiple digital health tools. OntarioMD can connect you to all of them and help you understand how to use them effectively to care for patients and to manage your practice. If you hate paperwork like I do, contact OntarioMD to get HRM, eNotifications, OLIS, eConsult or any other available provincial digital health tools (e.g., ONE® ID, ONE Mail, ConnectingOntario Clinical Viewer and more). Call 1-866-744-8668 or e-mail support@ontariomd.com.
Digital Health Shift – OntarioMD Privacy and Security Training
The latest entry of The Digital Health Shift has Dr. Darren Larsen talking about the benefits of completing the OntarioMD Privacy and Security Training.
EMR Quality Dashboard and Change Management
Today’s Digital Health Shift vlog is the third in a video series of OntarioMD CMO, Dr. Darren Larsen, speaking about the EMR Quality Dashboard. In this segment, Dr. Larsen discusses how leadership and collaboration amongst health care organizations are driving change to benefit patient care.
Digital Health helped save my baby and kept me sane twice!
Submitted by Amanda Story, OntarioMD Practice Advisor
On April 11, 2017, at the Muskoka Algonquin Health Centre in Huntsville, my third child was born. Clark was a perfect 19 inches long and 7.7 pounds, with a full head of hair. But things quickly got scary, when his blood sugar and body temperature began dropping and his breathing became irregular. He was stabilized, and we were transferred to Toronto’s Sick Kids Hospital.
Little did we know our journey with Kabuki Syndrome was about to begin. Kabuki syndrome is a rare, multisystem disorder characterized by multiple abnormalities including facial features, growth delays, varying degrees of intellectual disability, skeletal abnormalities, and short stature. There’s also the potential for a wide variety of additional symptoms affecting different organ systems. Kabuki syndrome affects males and females in equal numbers, and specific symptoms can vary greatly from one person to another. The incidence of Kabuki syndrome has been estimated to be somewhere between 1 in 32,000 to 1 in 86,000 individuals in the general population.
Sick Kids Hospital was up and running on a computerized charting system, and was able to get all the test results from our local hospital quickly. It was amazing how hospital information flowed – physicians of all specialties sharing one chart, no test duplication, everyone knowing and seeing what had been ordered, what was pending and what the plan was. I was a stressed out, tired and scared mom, and I appreciated not having to repeat Clark’s history over and over again. When Clark would decide to throw a wrench in the plan, it was easy for the nurse and I to note it and a message was sent to the physician to get new orders and/or a new plan. The digital health system made it easy for the changes to be communicated to his entire team of cardiologists, respirologists, and endocrinologists.
Eventually Clark rallied, and we were transferred closer to home, to The North Bay Regional Health Centre. It was a big adjustment. We were surprised that communication between Sick Kids and North Bay Regional Health Centre was by paper and mail. When Clark regressed a bit, it was hard to compare results, causing duplicate tests and delayed treatment while phone calls were made to discuss results. We had experienced the power of digital health at Sick Kids, and appreciated how all the health care providers were connected. At the time, North Bay didn’t offer this – though it has since implemented a computerized system. It did offer video conference calls through the Ontario Telemedicine Network’s system, which allowed Clark’s entire team to connect and get his treatment back on track.
We finally made it home after a couple more weeks. Unfortunately, our stay at home was short. Within a couple of months, Clark caught a cold and a bad cough. We quickly took him back to North Bay Regional Health Centre, where he was admitted and put under observation. After the first 24 hours, Clark got worse. The following day, he went from needing a little bit of oxygen support to needing to be intubated and rushed to The Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), which had been consulted during his rapid decline. During transportation, his heart got tired and arrested from working so hard to make up for the decreased lung function. The amazing transfer team from Ornge was able to revive him quickly en route to CHEO. The Pediatric Intensive Care unit was ready and had pulled together a team to assess him and move him to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), which is a heart and lung bypass to allow him to heal.
CHEO had just implemented a computerized charting system called EPIC. It allowed the hospital to flow information around his care, similar to what we’d seen at Sick Kids. Everyone could see and use the same information in real time to assist with coordinating Clark’s care. His entire team at CHEO – Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), cardiology, vascular surgery, perfusionists, respirology, genetics immunology, infection control, physiotherapy and pain and symptom management, along with imaging and pharmacy, were all working in one chart around a single patient. This was digital health at its best – facilitating communications and transitions in care.
Our family physician was also kept informed through her office EMR, using Health Report Manager (HRM) to get Clark’s hospital reports quickly and keep up to date on his progress. I received many phone calls for support and counselling without having to give updates or go into details. It very much kept me sane during a very scary time.
When Clark was able to be transferred to recovery, the same chart, same information and same teams followed him. Even after discharge, the amazing efficiency of digital health still helps us to this day with his scheduled follow-ups. Each team can communicate and coordinate his appointments into clusters that help us save travel time, and tests and procedures can be grouped together to help minimize Clark’s discomfort.
I am very thankful for the adoption of digital health by Ontario hospitals and health care providers. I’ve seen the high level of accuracy and understanding it offered to everyone involved in Clark’s care. It made me feel comfortable and confident that the physicians had access to everything they needed all in one shareable electronic record. Clark’s medical information followed him wherever he was treated. Digital health has helped connect all the hospitals we visited with Clark, so they could share information and make the best decisions for his care. The digital health change in our health care system is also providing more information quickly and easily to family physicians everywhere in the province. Keeping physicians up to date to provide supportive care to caregivers and other family members is easier and faster. I am convinced that digital health is removing many barriers to efficient and effective health care in Ontario, and I honestly believe it helped save my baby’s life!
Clark is growing stronger daily. We have celebrated many “inchstones” such as regaining head and neck control and re-learning how to roll over, along with a few milestones such as pulling his socks off. He is a very happy baby that brings so much light into our lives.
Digital Health Shift – EMR Quality Dashboard and Quality Improvement
This Digital Health Shift vlog is the second in a video series of OntarioMD Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Darren Larsen discussing the EMR Quality Dashboard. This segment focuses on how the EMR Quality Dashboard delivers Quality Improvement to patient care.
Digital Health Shift – EMR Quality Dashboard
In this Digital Health Shift vlog, OntarioMD Chief Medical Information Officer Dr. Darren Larsen discusses the need to help physicians move beyond simply focusing on patient care for individuals, toward being able to more easily analyze their entire patient population and proactively those at risk. OntarioMD is focused on improving population-based care through the development of EMR-integrated tools such as our EMR Quality Dashboard proof of concept, which translate EMR data through user-friendly visualization. And, through the ongoing development of our Quality Support Program, we’re providing the support and education physicians need to improve EMR data quality for efficient population-based care.