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 | Dec 31, 2016 | Doctors, e-Health, Electronic Medical Records, Ontario, Technology
“For example, wouldn’t it make sense that anytime a patient has lab tests completed anywhere in the province that the results of these tests would be immediately sent to the records in each of their doctors’ offices?”
Minister Eric Hoskins’ Bill 41 continues to be confounding for many physicians, but possibly the most consistent question I am hearing is: Why do we need another layer of bureaucracy? How will sub-LHINs improve the system? One very intriguing twitter answer that I received suggested that this extra bureaucratic layer will serve as “administrative infrastructure” for primary care. That is something worth considering since I agree that Family Doctors need much more support than they are currently receiving.
Before I move directly into the discussion, I want to stress that I am not including those primary care providers who are not physicians in this consideration. The reason is that I want to focus on the infrastructure resources needed to deliver primary care and the Nurse Practitioner- led clinics are tremendously well-resourced, with all expenses already covered by the government, a luxury that physicians cannot access to the same degree which is the point here.
Read more at https://drgailbeck.com/2016/10/28/bill-41-infrastructure-investment/
by medicaltechont | Dec 5, 2016 | e-Health, Ontario MD, OntarioMD, Technology
TORONTO — Health Minister Eric Hoskins says he’ll act on a recommendation to give patients access to their electronic medical records as the province updates the mandate of eHealth Ontario.
The Liberal government’s privatization czar, Ed Clark, recommended eHealth’s role be refocused more on service delivery, and said patients should be able to interact with their own personal health information.
“We must bring patients into the system and give them access to their own information, and in doing so we must continue to focus on security and privacy of patient health records,” he said. “There’s no reason why you couldn’t build an app to connect into that (eHealth system of electronic medical records).”
Read more at http://www.bnn.ca/ontario-will-not-sell-ehealth-assets-as-ed-clark-says-agency-worth-5-7b-1.613980
by medicaltechont | Oct 24, 2016 | eHealth
TORONTO – The Liberal government is scrambling to get a valuation of eHealth Ontario before the auditor general releases what is expected to be a damning report on the controversial electronic health agency.
Read more at http://www.canhealth.com/blog/two-evaluations-of-ehealth-under-way/
by medicaltechont | Oct 15, 2016 | e-Health, Ontario, OntarioMD, Privacy
Interesting article written in the Huffington Post this week regarding EMR and changes in the medical software landscape. Seems that there is a lot being written on the potential use of patient data. As quoted in the article “value assessment of Ontario’s digital health assets and all related intellectual property and infrastructure.” This is starting to make some question the long term plans for your personal medical data in Ontario.
Is Selling Your Health Data The Liberals’ Budget-Balancing Plan?
Last week, Ontario’s Liberal Government announced plans to consider monetizing the data stored by eHealth Ontario. In an open letter to Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Business Adviser Ed Clark, Health Minister Eric Hoskins asked him to do a “value assessment of Ontario’s digital health assets and all related intellectual property and infrastructure.” Additionally, he asked that Clark look at ways to “maximize the value of these assets.“
This type of data is a treasure trove for private businesses and would be worth a lot of money to them. Just look at how Facebook has been able to monetize the personal information it has stored on all its “friends.”
But wait, isn’t your personal health data stored at your physician’s office, not at eHealth?
Read more online at http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/sohail-gandhi/ehealth-monetization_b_12431972.html
