If you asked cardiologist Dr. Steve Tilley about the benefits of sharing patient information through the Community Information Integration (CII) initiative he will tell you they can make a real difference to providers and patients.
Dr. Tilley is a staff cardiologist at Red Deer Regional Hospital as well as working at the Healthy Heart Institute, his community practice. Through CII, Dr. Tilley can upload his clinic consult reports directly from his electronic medical record to Netcare.
Several months ago he saw a patient who was referred to him in his community clinic for shortness of breath that turned out to be a severe aortic stenosis requiring surgery. That surgery was scheduled to take place in several months’ time.
Flash forward a few weeks and the patient presents to a rural emergency department with acute onset shortness of breath that was determined to be pulmonary edema. The family doctor covering the emergency department was able to retrieve Dr. Tilley’s consult report from Alberta Netcare, see the diagnosis, read about the planned surgery, contact Dr. Tilley, and between them expedite the valve procedure including a transfer to Edmonton.
Dr. Tilley says the sharing of the information was pivotal to the patient’s care,
“The doctor may have been able to reconnect the dots and likely would have in due course. However, the question is, would the patient have been really managed as quickly, how many more hospital days would have been consumed, and would the patient’s outcome have been as good?”
He says because the hospital had access to the information the rural ED physician was able to act quickly. And that access created by participating in CII, says Dr. Tilley, has been an unequivocal benefit to his patients.
You can listen to Dr. Tilley’s story on his CII/CPAR experience and that other physicians on the
One Nail at a Time: Insights for Building Your Patient’s Medical Home podcast.
