Clinic: 'We knew we were impacting our patients' informational continuity'
It may be approaching the typical holiday season slowdown, but that's not the case for the Community Information Integration/Central Patient Attachment Registry initiative. CII/CPAR continues gaining physician interest and momentum with 47 primary care and specialty clinics live and 24 clinics in progress.
A recent clinic to adopt CII/CPAR is the Kneehill Medical Clinic in Big Country Primary Care Network. Clinic Manager, Sharon Peters shares their experience:
Our doctors wanted this. The decision for the clinic as a whole to participate was a simple one to make. The challenge was ensuring we set dedicated time to complete the paper work. There is a lot of paper and a lot of details. Once you get through the paper, the value to patients is immediate. Within days of being live, we saw Community Encounter Digest reports and knew we were impacting our patients informational continuity. Within a month, we will be validating provider relationships and helping our patients and providers manage this relationship as they navigate the health system. Keeping the end in mind is what got our team through the administrative work.
More than 250 providers are now sharing patient encounter information, panels and/or consult reports through CII and CPAR. Patient numbers are also climbing; more than 50,000 Albertans have a Community Encounter Digest in their Netcare record that provides a snapshot of the care they are receiving in the community. Community specialists have submitted over 20,000 consult reports to Netcare.
Importantly Healthquest clinics participating in CPAR are receiving eNotifications in their EMR when one of their CPAR paneled patients has a hospital admission or discharge, ED visit or day surgery. TELUS clinics start to go live with eNotifications in the new year.
Visit the CII/CPAR webpage for additional information and tools.
Primary care clinics interested in participating should contact their PCN. Specialist clinics can contact Alberta health eHealth Support Services: ehealthsupport@cgi.com.
