by medicaltechont | Jun 9, 2018 | Canada, Cloud, e-Health, eHealth, Election, Electronic Medical Records, Healthcare, Hospitals, Medical Records, Technology
I have been a family physician practising in this province for 30 years. It is a great joy looking after my patients. However, looking after them in the health care quagmire of disconnected information and bureaucratic silos is becoming a nightmare. It is alarming seeing my young colleagues bewildered so early in their careers, and new graduates of family medicine are afraid to set up practice.
The province is carved up into 14 Local Health Integration Networks and 76 sub-LHINs each seemingly reinventing the wheel while consultants analyze the same things over and over again. There is an obsession with accountability frameworks designed by this ever growing bureaucracy that has little idea about what we actually do and what tools we need to do our job.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on a huge array of electronic repositories and information systems that don’t integrate at the most basic level with each other years after they were built. Providers spend countless hours trying to locate who does what where and what hoops to jump through to get appointments. We fax long paper forms with lab and other reports that are somehow not available from these expensive repositories. We typically access each other by phone in the absence of electronic messaging capabilities.
Read more at https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/8651966-survival-at-the-front-lines-of-the-health-care-quagmire/
by medicaltechont | Mar 25, 2018 | Doctors, Technology
Imagine not having access to a doctor, and the only way you can receive care is if you travel hundreds of kilometres. A Saskatchewan program is harnessing the power of medical robotics to bring care to remote communities.
There is a robot revolution in health care. Everything from surgery, to preparing chemotherapy and how care is delivered to patients is being transformed by medical robotics.
In Saskatchewan, that means medicine is beamed into remote communities with the assistance of robots.
Read more at https://globalnews.ca/news/4102687/cant-access-a-doctor-a-robot-will-see-you-now/
by medicaltechont | Nov 25, 2017 | Doctors, Healthcare, Technology
Young doctors are feeling burnt-out, and this affects their ability to empathise with patients, a local study has found.
Researchers surveyed nearly 500 medical residents across 34 specialities in three public hospitals, eight in 10 of whom said they felt emotionally exhausted, lacking in personal accomplishment, or some degree of depersonalisation. These are generally considered to be the three components of burnout.
On top of that, researchers found that medical residents – who are training to be specialists – in Singapore are more burnt-out than their counterparts in the United States, and have lower levels of empathy.
by medicaltechont | Jun 10, 2017 | Healthcare, private clinics
Rosalia Guthrie is still astounded that it cost her $4,350 to get her shoulder injury assessed by a surgeon who works in Canada’s public health-care system.
She had been waiting in agony for 16 months to see Dr. William Regan when she called his office, asking how much longer it would be. His secretary gave her the number of another clinic to call – so she did. That’s when Ms. Guthrie learned there was another way in to see the surgeon – with no lineup.
But it would cost her. “The woman there called me back … and gave me three [appointment] times … right away,” says Ms. Guthrie, 67, of Salmon Arm, B.C., who was told that she had reached Dr. Regan’s other, private clinic. “Then she said, ‘You have to pay.’”
Read more at https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/investigations/doctors-extra-billing-private-clinics-investigation/article35260558/
by medicaltechont | Apr 8, 2017 | Healthcare, Legal, Ontario, Technology
The Ontario Court of Appeal has upheld a 24-month damage award to a long-service nurse in a doctor’s office who believed that she had been fired during a hostile meeting with her employer.
The doctor for whom she worked wanted her to look into electronic medical records (EMR). She was overwhelmed with a heavy workload and did not get to it. The doctor angrily confronted her in a meeting, at which the doctor’s wife was also present. The court found that the doctor, in his anger, said, “Go! Get out! I am so sick of coming into this office every day and looking at your ugly face.” He also pointed at her, shouted at her, accused her of being resistant to change, and used profanity during that meeting. The employee, distraught, left the meeting and never returned to work. The employer treated her as having quit. The employee sued for wrongful dismissal.
Read more at http://www.occupationalhealthandsafetylaw.com/your-ugly-face-employers-condescending-aggressive-hostile-and-profane-behaviour-in-one-meeting-resulted-in-constructive-dismissal-nurse-awarded-24-months-in-damages
