HAMILTON HEALTH SCIENCES (HHS) WINS MEDSEEK’s 2009 eHEALTH EXCELLENCE AWARD

MEDSEEK recognizes HHS for its outstanding web portal vision, innovation, performance and achievement.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MEDSEEK, the leading provider of enterprise portal connectivity solutions, announced today that Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) won MEDSEEK’s 2009 eHealth Excellence Award for outstanding vision, innovation and performance in using web portal technology to enhance care delivery, information access and service. The award was presented to Dale Anderson, HHS’ manager of projects and eHealth solutions, at MEDSEEK’s 9th Annual eHealth Client Congress in Tampa, Fla., on Feb. 25, 2009.

Hamilton Health Sciences is one of the most comprehensive health care systems in Canada. Its six hospitals and cancer facility are licensed for more than 900 beds and serve more than 2.3 million residents of Hamilton and central south and central west Ontario. Through its affiliation with McMaster University's Faculty of Health Sciences, HHS offers some of the most innovative treatments and talented medical professionals in Canada.

“MEDSEEK is pleased to recognize HHS for the exceptional efforts it has made to provide safe, high quality care as well provide a total user experience throughout the entire healthcare system,“ said Peter Kuhn, MEDSEEK’s CEO. “We are excited to acknowledge the impact our portal solutions have had across HHS’ enterprise and among its physicians, patients and employee constituencies.”

Over the past 4 years, more than 2,700 HHS clinicians have registered to access its patients’ electronic medical records in real time via a portal called ClinicalConnect. Through this portal, clinicians have access to a unified, single view of a patient’s clinical reports, laboratory results, medication lists, images and other data stored in disparate clinical systems. These systems include a hospital information solution from MEDITECH, picture archiving and communication system from GE Healthcare as well as a health information management application from Sovera Document Imaging.

In 2007, HHS redesigned its consumer portal to make it easier and more convenient for patients and visitors to access health information and interact with the organization. The consumer portal provides greater emphasis on patient education and included an upgrade of the existing infrastructure to make the site more stable and reliable for end users.

HHS, which is the largest employer in Hamilton, has also implemented an employee portal to disseminate and streamline communication with its more than 10,000 employees, improving efficiency, productivity, job satisfaction and staff retention. Employees are using the portal to access staff directory, schedules, internal job postings, training and more, helping HHS’ human resources department operate more efficiently.

“We are honored to be recognized by MEDSEEK for excellence in the use of eHealth to improve patient care, safety and operational efficiencies,” said HHS’ Anderson. “We chose to partner with MEDSEEK for its unparalleled insight into healthcare technology innovations and best practices, and its focus on the user experience which has truly transformed and streamlined our ability to provide quality patient care.” Although ClinicalConnect began at Hamilton Health Sciences, it is now being extended and adopted by the Local Health Integration Network or region to interconnect other hospitals, community healthcare agencies and healthcare providers.

About Hamilton Health Sciences
Hamilton Health Sciences is a family of six unique hospitals and a cancer centre, serving more than 2.3 million residents of Hamilton and central west Ontario. Hamilton Health Sciences is the second largest hospital group in Ontario and serves as a regional referral centre for burns, trauma, cardiac, stroke, neurosurgery, pediatrics, digestive diseases, high-risk obstetrics, cancer, orthopedics and rehabilitation services. With a staff of approximately 10,000, the hospital is the largest employer in Hamilton, Ontario. As an academic teaching hospital with more than 900 beds and an affiliation with McMaster University and Mohawk College, Hamilton Health Sciences is committed to providing exemplary health care for the people and communities we serve and advancing excellence in education and health research.

About MEDSEEK
For more information, visit www.medseek.com or call 888-MEDSEEK.

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"R.E.A.C.H." Clinical Portal Making a Difference in Doctors' and Patients’ Lives

R.E.A.C.H. or "Rapid Electronic Access to Clinical Health Information"is an electronic health information portal that allows authorized users access to their patients’ clinical information through a secure web-browser, whether inside or outside of the hospital.

This means Lab and Diagnostic test results, images, transcriptions and progress reports written (at any one of the REACH partner Hospital's) can be viewed immediately by a Physician treating the patient. Currently the REACH portal includes The Credit Valley Hospital William Osler Health Centre, and Halton Health Care. Trillium Health Centre and Headwaters Health Care Centre will be joining the network soon and Hamilton Health Sciences and the Scarborough Hospital also use the same vendor solution. Sharing Patient's clinical information is important because patients move between facilities for across a region to access different types of diagnostic tests and/or procedures---that are not necessarily performed at all facilities. At the Credit Valley Hospital, one of the Physicians was asked what he thought of this new EHR initiative. Here’s what he said.

Dr. Tom McGowan’s Notes*: Wednesday October 15, 2008
Sitting in clinic today it struck me how quickly REACH has changed how I work. Today was a day when I saw new cancer patients with new problems. Of the four new patients I saw today, I needed to look into REACH to get information from other hospitals on two of them. It took seconds to look them up, and find the information I needed from the other hospitals. Before REACH, getting that information would have taken anywhere from 15 minutes to hours, and usually many phone calls.

Given that we’re the only Radiation program in the region, we always see patients who have had all, or large portions, of their care elsewhere. Most of the time the referring doctors make sure all the information is faxed over when the referral is made. Most of the time we can make the decisions we need to make with the information we have. But if there was a recent test, or clinic visit, then we should see that report before we make a final treatment recommendation.

There’s wasted time and effort when information comes in piecemeal. There are times when the results of the test aren’t available when the patient is first referred by their medical doctor (MD). Sometimes the referring MD will send it when it’s ready, and sometimes not. We can’t expect that to happen because it’s too much to ask a busy referring doctor to keep track of upcoming tests, and make sure they’re faxed to us, when ready.

Even if it is sent after the result is in, we’ve got to be sure the new information gets attached to the original. While this normally happens, I’ve had cases where I’ve had our staff call a referring hospital to get a test result faxed over. Sometimes they say they’ve already sent it but we don’t have it. So we get them to send it again, only to find it went to my office rather than my clinic.

When there appear to be duplicates of the same test, there’s more time wasted while I compare the results from the two documents. Only then can I be sure it’s not new information that will influence the patient’s care. It’s pretty obvious that this isn’t the most efficient way to manage anybody’s time. Now I have an advantage that I hadn’t really appreciated until I started to use the REACH portal. By looking at the records from other hospitals, we can sometimes see results of tests that are relevant, but that the patient didn’t realize could be useful, or had completely forgotten about. This type of thing doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it matters.

So getting back to today; I had two patients that had information I needed from other hospitals. Thanks to REACH, I had it, easily after looking for a few seconds. I didn’t have to figure out what to ask for, where things might have been done, and deciding whether I really needed it in the first place. I was able to spend all my clinic time doing clinical work, seeing my patients, explaining things to them, and figuring out what they needed to do next. And that makes for a satisfying day.

*Dr. Tom McGowan is Physician Director, Radiation Oncology at The Carlo Fidani Peel Regional Cancer Centre located at The Credit Valley Hospital.



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Original article published in "A Credit to your Health" AUTUMN 2008 / VOLUME 10 ISSUE 4.

RESPECT, TEAMWORK AND COLLABORATION

By Michelle DiEmanuele, President and CEO of Credit Valley Hospital

Hospitals are huge and can be intimidating institutions, not just for the patients, but for a new CEO such as myself. I am quite frankly overwhelmed by the amount of teamwork and collaboration that exists here at Credit Valley and beyond our doors with our health-care partners. This is great news, for if we are to move forward with our quest to deliver patient and family-centred care and to ensure equitable and sustainable access for all, we must forge even stronger relationships. And we’ll do so if we make teamwork, collaboration and partnerships our top priorities.

Gone are the days when hospitals competed with one another for scarce financial resources in order to duplicate programs and services at each facility. What’s critical is the idea of mutual respect - within the hospital and broader health-care environment recognizing the significant role each facility, each program and each individual plays in the overall delivery of good patient care. It is critical to maintaining that community connection and understanding as we build and reform the system.

The spirit of cooperation has been accelerated through design and demand of the various regional health systems across the country. Even before the formalization of such systems, there have been many informal and spontaneous examples of co-operation among health-care facilities. I’m hugely impressed by these initiatives that often begin at the community and grass-roots level.

Here at The Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga, Ontario, we are working closely with our neighbouring hospitals and other health-care partners to offer our patients more comprehensive and coordinated services, each through our own regional specialities. The patient experience is further improved because in many instances, they no longer have to travel to Toronto or Hamilton or other larger centres for their care, reducing their travel costs and anxiety.

In order for this collaboration to work, we have all put new resources into making sure our patients are being informed and navigated appropriately to find the care they need, where and when they need it. It’s not always where they thought they might get it. In fact, it may not even be in a hospital environment. That’s asking a lot of our patients. Doing our best to make the move between facilities and caregivers as seamless and painless as possible is paramount to a good patient and family-centred experience. One way we do that, is through the REACH web portal.

The collaboration initially between six physical hospital sites in Peel and Halton regions (Credit Valley, Halton Health Care and William Osler Health Centre) means all of our clinicians have instant access to patient health information stored electronically at any of the hospitals through a secure network called REACH -- Rapid Electronic Access to Clinical Health information. The web connectivity is growing between more hospital sites which will allow even more physicians to access clinical data from disparate systems through one unified view. This allows physicians to easily review their patient’s records, lab results, cardiology images, diagnostic (PACS) images, transcriptions and progress reports. Because the ehealth record shows their patient’s entire health history, important information such as medication allergies will be revealed even if the patient inadvertently forgets to mention the allergy at the time of a visit to any of the health facilities on the REACH network.

Within our own four walls at Credit Valley, the team approach to problem solving has made significant improvements toward patient and family-centred care, most recently in our regional cancer centre. Cancer patients have spent seemingly endless time between appointments for tests and treatment in the same building. The Stream Team, made up of oncology doctors and nurses, clerks, lab, pharmacy and information systems with input from staff, patients and volunteers, set out to redefine their patients’ experience. They charted every step, every process, every wasted minute and after several months, they had streamlined ten processes to seven and decreased the patients’ waiting time by almost two hours! Nurses and doctors collaborated on patient assessments; volunteers took on responsibility to ensure patients moved smoothly from one process to the next and now, there’s the potential to see even more patients each day.

I believe leadership happens at every level within an organization that values and respects the roles of every individual – not just the caregivers – but the patients and families we are here to serve. I saw that first hand as I worked alongside the men and women cleaning stretchers in our emergency department; as I sat beside the charge nurse who was more like an air traffic controller as she juggled patients, personnel and stretchers throughout her shift. I believe the role of leadership is to create the conditions for success not just in terms of the hospital, the system or even the government. Everything we do, every decision we make, should be prefaced with the question, “what’s best for the patient?” This isn’t easy. It’s takes a sense of respect for everyone at that table and the courage to push the traditional boundaries and norms to embrace innovative solutions. But without that respect, the kind of changes our hospitals need will be too slow for what our patients deserve – and increasingly, demand. Respect, teamwork and collaboration have and will make the difference in elevating patient care.

Is that respect there? You bet. Having re-entered the health-care sector, I’m humbled daily by the unbelievable dedication on the part of doctors, nurses, clinicians, and administrators who put their patients first in a system where that isn’t always easy.

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Michelle DiEmanuele is the President and CEO of the Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga Ontario.

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REACHing for Leading-Edge Patient Care with e-Health

By Dan Germain, VP, CFO and CIO at the Credit Valley Hospital and former e-Health lead for the Mississauga Halton Local Health Integration Network (LHIN.)

In Ontario, very few hospitals can share their disparate Electronic Health Records (EHRs) between providers or with patients/clients. To facilitate sharing of patients’ EHRs among physicians and clinicians, The Credit Valley Hospital (CVH) joined William Osler Health Centre (WOHC) and Halton Healthcare Services (HHS) to establish an electronic clinical portal. Trillium Health Centre (THC) and Headwaters Health Care Centre (HHCC) have also entered into this partnership and will go live in the next few months extending the Rapid Electronic Access to Clinical Health (REACH) EHR initiative to all hospitals within two LHINs serving a catchment area of 1.8 million Ontario residents (about 5% of the total Canadian population). This existing collaboration between six physical hospital sites in the Peel and Halton regions and two LHINs – the Mississauga Halton LHIN (MH LHIN) and the Central West LHIN (CW LHIN) – is unprecedented and a landmark partnership in the Province of Ontario.

The REACH Clinical (EHR) Portal enables all associated sites’ clinicians to have instant access to longitudinal patient health information including but not limited to allergies and alerts, lab and diagnostic test results, diagnostic images and reports, pharmacy data, transcribed notes, scanned images, progress reports, and other important health-related information. A thorough Privacy Impact Assessment was also perforemed to ensure REACH meets all Ontario privacy standards.

At each constituent hospital, patient data is easily accessed today through our secure network solution and consolidated into one customizable, patient-centric view. Based on a federated data-model, patient data remains in its original format on its respective (legacy) vendor IT system, allowing for all systems to be leveraged across multiple domains, rather than replacing them. Additionally, using a federated data-model ensured implementation of the REACH clinical portal was extremely fast and inexpensive especially when compared to other more complex solutions. The partnership between REACH Hospital stakeholders not only enhances patient safety and satisfaction, it provides an intuitive web-based interface that is accessible anywhere.

The REACH portal was created using MEDSEEK in partnership with Agfa HealthCare, both leading providers of enterprise-wide e-Health solutions. This simple portal solution is also vendor-agnostic, so the system is compatible with almost all health information systems, diagnostic imaging vendors, and other suppliers. “Over 160 interfaces are available on a plug-and-play like basis,” says Dan Germain, Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Information Officer at CVH.

Dr. Paul Philbrook, CVH’s Chief of Family Medicine and Chair of the Central West – Mississauga Halton Community Family Medicine/Public Health Network of Physicians, along with his colleagues, championed the idea of allowing affiliated physicians the opportunity to access their patient records across all local hospital sites. He explains, “The REACH portal is a welcome advancement of access to patient information and integration locally. This will enhance patient care and safety.”

Germain, also former e-Health lead for the Mississauga-Halton LHIN, further explains, “The REACH portal was created for physicians and clinicians to improve patient care and provide real-time access to existing patient records across the region. Although more time is needed to determine the quantifiable benefits of such a solution, it is expected that the REACH Portal will assist in avoiding potential medical errors and offset the possibility that other critical information is inadvertently missed for elective, emergency admissions or outpatient visits. Saving just one life by using this system will pay for itself.”

To date, the REACH EHR portal is getting over 9,000 views per month within the Mississauga-Halton and Central West LHINs---with one-third of those views made by Physicians looking at patient data from other hospitals. Over 1,000,000 outpatient visits and 100,000 discharges per year are now available within the REACH portal at this time. “The clinicians who are accessing patient information via the REACH portal love it,” says Germain. The portal has the ability to consolidate information about a patient/client from other sources (e.g., Community Care Access Centre’s), but currently, the focus is to bring more hospitals on stream and ensure as much clinical data is contained in the portal as needed.

The Mississauga-Halton and Central West LHIN's are fortunate in securing both the commitment of all regional hospitals to join the REACH portal, and also engaging a vendor solution that was both comprehensive and transferrable outside the walls of any specific site. This collaboration between regional hospitals is a stepping stone toward the overall e-Health goals for the province of Ontario, for example, building a standardized methodology to identify each unique patient and then consolidate electronic health care data from a variety of sources (e.g. hospitals, private laboratories, pharmacies, nursing homes.) It should also be noted that Hamilton Health Sciences and the Scarborough Hospital are also using the Medseek portal (distributed by Agfa HealthCare in Canada.) Ottawa-area Montfort Hospital has also signed on, but have not gone live yet. REACH will be ready to plug-and-play into Provincial EHR Initiatives once available.

We keep hearing from patients that they want to be more involved in their own health care. "Providing patients with electronic access to their health record and wellness information– that’s our next goal,” says Germain. “We can make our collective vision happen a bit sooner – anything is possible." Now that our disparate Clinical Information can be accessed and leveraged, a REACH Patient Portal is on the horizon. Germain explains that this Patient Portal initiative will be especially beneficial to those managing chronic disease prevention and that it is imperative that that patients have access to their own health records in a secure manner, as well as access to reliable health and wellness information.

Dan Germain is the Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Information Officer at The Credit Valley Hospital.

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Clinical Portal Vendor MEDSEEK leads in 2008 KLAS® Rankings

MEDSEEK Leads KLAS® Portals Segment as of August 22, 2008.

Birmingham, AL (PRWEB) September 4, 2008 -- MEDSEEK, a leading provider of enterprise portal management solutions, announced today it leads in KLAS® rankings for its Clinical Web Portal software solution.

KLAS® is an independent healthcare market research firm that gathers data about clinical portal solutions from CIO's, Directors, and other healthcare providers about software functionality, solution performance, technical support and service. According to the August 26, 2008 Platinum KLAS ® database, MEDSEEK has the highest current performance ratings, outscoring all other clinical portal solutions.

Peter Kuhn, President of MEDSEEK commented, "MEDSEEK's superior ranking in the KLAS ® report highlights our effort to provide comprehensive eHealth solutions." Kuhn added, "We frequently receive high praise from our clients on our ability to deliver complex installations on time and on budget. The KLAS rating validates our reputation as an organization that consistently delivers on our commitments."

The KLAS® database also reports anonymous comments from providers who are using the eConnect Clinical Portal solution: "The implementation process was very smooth. It was very well planned and organized and was executed according to that plan. The planning was very thorough and there were few surprises and gotchas along the way. The implementation staff MEDSEEK provided was very knowledgeable. They were excellent communicators. We were able to install the system on time and within budget.” (Quoted from a healthcare provider interviewed by KLAS, see KLAS® commentary August 26, 2008.)

"MEDSEEK eConnect is the perfect portal solution for our physicians who do not want to learn the complexities of using the PACS and hospital clinical systems. This product is a single sign-on system that helps doctors get to patient information quickly. We have heard nothing negative from the physicians. All of the feedback about using eConnect for pulling results has been good, and the doctors love being able to pull images by using a URL." (From the KLAS ® database, August 26, 2008.)

Michelle Wickham, Research Director for KLAS stated, "KLAS applauds those vendors who utilize KLAS® data to understand and respond to their customers' needs. We are pleased when the data shows that a vendor is performing well, and we plan gather data on an ongoing basis to continuously monitor vendor performance in this segment."

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About MEDSEEK:
Birmingham, Ala.-based MEDSEEK provides healthcare organizations with Enterprise eHealth solutions to fully engage and strengthen relationships with key constituents - physicians, patients, employees, and consumers. By connecting information and communities to foster an enhanced experience with the organization, hospitals will improve community advocacy, revenue and patient acquisition/retention, physician relations, and clinical decision making.

MEDSEEK's comprehensive technology platform and strategic consulting services create the infrastructure and provide the thought leadership for hospitals to deliver the most powerful Portal solutions. With more than ten years' experience and 600+ hospital customers, MEDSEEK has the experience and expertise to meet the diverse needs of the healthcare community. MEDSEEK also maintains offices in California and Mississippi. In Canada, Medseek is distributed by Agfa HealthCare. For more information, visit MEDSEEK or call 888-MEDSEEK.

About KLAS:
KLAS is a research firm specializing in monitoring and reporting the performance of healthcare vendors. KLAS' mission is to improve delivery, by independently measuring vendor performance for the benefit of our healthcare provider partners, consultants, investors, and vendors. Working together with executives from over 4500 hospitals and over 2500 clinics, KLAS delivers timely reports, trends, and statistics, which provide a solid overview of vendor performance in the industry. KLAS measures performance of software, professional services, and medical equipment vendors. For more information, go to www.KLASresearch.com, email marketing@KLASresearch.com, or call 1-800-920-4109 to speak with a KLAS representative. The data referenced was retrieved Tuesday, August 26, 2008 and fluctuates daily. Copyright 2002-2008 KLAS Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.

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