Dr. Barry Chan using the new cNEO viewer which was successfully integrated with our QuadraMed system.
Dr. Barry Chan using the new cNEO viewer which was successfully integrated with our QuadraMed system.
Credit
Matthew Manor/KGH

The province’s efforts to create an electronic health record for every patient are picking up steam. Here at KGH we have been doing our part by taking part in an important pilot project that has successfully brought patient lab test results online for care teams in our hospital to view.

It’s part of the Connecting Northern and Eastern Ontario (cNEO) program, which is funded by eHealth Ontario. Along with KGH, the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, Lanark County Mental Health and St. Patrick’s Home of Ottawa, all took part in the pilot project. The goal was to create a software interface at each site that would give care teams seamless access to a brand new cNEO clinical viewer. Through this viewer, clinicians can call up patient lab test results stored in a provincial database called the Ontario Laboratories Information System (OLIS). At the moment, over 80 per cent of lab results in the province are regularly loaded into OLIS by both hospitals and private labs.

“Our Information Management Clinical Systems team worked for months to build and test an interface that integrates the clinical viewer into our hospital’s QuadraMed system,” says John Coleman, Project Manager. “Now that we have created it, this interface will be used at every hospital in the province that uses QuadraMed.”

Once the clinical viewer was available inside KGH, the team in charge was given permission by the province to sign on a maximum of 296 users as part of the pilot. Just over 100 of them are physicians and the rest are nurses and other clinicians. 

“The positive response to this pilot has been overwhelming. Unfortunately we have been turning down hundreds of requests from people inside and outside KGH to begin using the system right away. We will have to wait for the next phases of the cNEO project to launch before we can create more users at KGH,” says Janna Dolphin, cNEO Change Management Advisor at KGH. 

Those now on the system say the technology is already making a big difference in many areas of the hospital.

“Having the ability to check for lab results online has dramatically improved the efficiency at the cancer centre,” says Dan Hogan, KGH’s Ambulatory Oncology Program Coordinator. “With results available in cNEO from multiple facilities, it allows caregivers to free up more time for direct patient care, instead of searching multiple databases or making numerous phone calls to other facilities.”

For the patients, the new technology also promises smoother and more seamless care as it will help eliminate information gaps as they move between hospitals, practitioner offices (such as family physicians or specialists), home care and long-term care settings. It will also help reduce the number of unnecessary lab tests and will give care teams timely and broader access to their lab test results to help with their care planning. 

“This is no doubt one of the most important initiatives I have encountered during my years here at KGH. With the access to the lab data, diagnosis are made much faster, comprehensive evaluation can be made on first contact with the patient, and less repeat bloodwork is needed. The difference it has made is incredible,” says Dr. Barry Chan. “Our Medicine program can’t wait to have additional access via the provincial viewer once the Connecting Ontario implementation is completed.”

Now that the pilot project has proven the technology works, the KGH Project Management Office will be managing the cNEO implementation for the South East LHIN. This next big phase will focus on having hospitals and other health care providers load more types of clinical data into the system, as well as view it. This will include discharge summaries, Emergency Department results, diagnostic imaging reports, infection control information, other hospital documents and Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) reports to name a few. The work to bring all this online is now well underway and it’s expected to launch across the province over the next 12 to 18 months.