MANITOULIN—Manitoulin Health Centre (MHC) is one of 23 hospitals in Northeastern Ontario that created a single electronic health information system to improve the delivery of safe, evidence-based patient-centred care. These 23 hospitals have joined ONE Health Information Technology Service (HIS), a shared service organization.
The transition to a single health information system will help to make delivering quality care more efficient and effective for health providers, as well as support safety improvements in patient care by linking healthcare professionals with up-to-date patient information.
The Expanse-based ONE HIS will be deployed in both acute and outpatient settings at participating hospitals, including MHC. “This not an IT led project, but a clinically driven initiative to develop standardized, evidence based best practices. All of us share a goal of providing exceptional patient care to our communities,” said Dr. Derek Garniss, ONE chief medical information officer and emergency physician at Sault Area Hospital. “By implementing Expanse together and establishing a shared health information session, ONE is transforming the way care is delivered to ensure that it is well informed, safe and seamless throughout the region.”
All ONE member hospitals have worked together throughout the project to standardize more than 450 order sets, nursing and physician documentation templates, drug administration times, medical directives and dictionaries. Good governance practices were key to ensuring all hospitals were represented at the planning and decision-making tables, regardless of size. While the goal is to establish a system that standardizes care across all entities, flexibility is still necessary to meet the needs of different facility sizes and settings ranging from 20-500 beds according to the National Post, January 10.
Jayme Watson, clinical transformation manager at MHC said, “MHC has already started this journey with implementation of the automated dispensing units for medications (ADUs), standardizing assessments according to best practice with nursing and a pilot project with physician colleagues surrounding front end voice dictation. All of these steps are critical in ensuring that our frontline team members are not overwhelmed with the magnitude of ONE HIS project. It is truly a clinical transformation, probably the biggest that most of us will see in our health care careers.”
