OntarioMD has announced the addition of 12 hospitals in Northwestern Ontario, in collaboration with eHealth Ontario and the Northwest Health Alliance (NWHA), to OntarioMD’s provincial Health Report Manager (HRM) digital report delivery solution. The addition of these hospitals is part of the transition from the regional Physician Office Integration (POI) report delivery project to HRM. HRM now delivers patient reports from 120 hospital corporations (with over 250 individual sites) and more than 100 specialty clinic sites located across Ontario to 10,000 physicians’ and nurse practitioners’ electronic medical records (EMRs). It is an essential tool to support integrated patient care.
What HRM means for integrated patient care in Northwestern Ontario is that if patients visit another part of Ontario and visit a hospital while there, their primary care providers will now receive their discharge summaries and other reports from those other hospitals into their EMRs. “If a patient from Thunder Bay goes to Niagara Falls on vacation and breaks their arm, their doctor or nurse practitioner in Thunder Bay will now receive their diagnostic imaging report from Niagara Falls in their EMR through HRM within minutes and before they come home. The doctor or nurse practitioner will have all the information they need to schedule a follow-up appointment, coordinate physiotherapy sooner, and prevent complications,” said Sarah Hutchison, CEO, OntarioMD.
The addition of North West Hospital Alliance hospitals as HRM sending facilities will add to the more than 1.8 million reports HRM sends every month to the EMRs of 10,000 clinicians throughout Ontario and will extend the provincial coverage and impact of this service. HRM has been a valuable provincial digital health asset for the province, avoiding $36 million in costs to the health care system in 2018, and saving about 23 to 33 minutes of practice time per clinician every day.
The 12 hospitals in Northwestern Ontario now live on HRM are:
- Atikokan General Hospital
- Dryden Regional Health Centre
- Geraldton District Hospital
- Lake of the Woods District Hospital
- Manitouwadge General Hospital
- Nipigon District Memorial Hospital
- North of Superior Healthcare Group
- Red Lake Margaret Cochenour Memorial Hospital
- Riverside Health Care Facilities
- Sioux Lookout Meno-Ya-Win Health Centre
- St. Joseph’s Care Group
- Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre
