It has been one year since the official vendor funding announcement for One Person One Record (OPOR). The program brings together IWK Health, Nova Scotia Health, Cyber Security and Digital Solutions, and the Department of Health and Wellness, all working towards improved patient care.
Not only are we already one year into the largest healthcare transformation project in Nova Scotia’s history, but we are now less than one year away from our first implementation of the new Clinical Information System! Implementation will happen in phases across the province in IWK Health facilities and NSHealth zones, starting with Cobequid Community Health Centre, Dartmouth General Hospital, and Bayers Lake Community Outpatient Centre in Central Zone.
With the introduction of a new system or workflow, there can be impacts (at least initially) to efficiencies. It is important to the OPOR team to ensure all providers know how to use the system and are aware of efficiency boosters.
An example of an efficiency booster is CIS-supported Dynamic Documentation. Dynamic Documentation functionality allows a provider to pull existing and relevant information from within the patient's chart and automatically populate it within their own notes. For example, if a provider is creating an Admission Note, information such as the reason for admission, basic demographics, allergies, and problem lists will all populate automatically. The provider can also “tag” information from other clinician's notes, pull the text into their notes—if your resident has developed a comprehensive assessment and plan, this can essentially be “copied and pasted” into your notes. Anything that is leveraged from notes created by others are cited within the providers note—they are denoted with a superscript, to preserve the integrity of the documentation. This process saves time and is a more efficient method of documenting notes. Services will also be supported with Smart Templates and additional aspects such as Auto-text to improve efficiency. In addition to the above, the OPOR-CIS also supports full front end speech recognition and dictation through Dragon Medical One.
When designing a CIS, the partnership of Technology and Integration along with Clinical Solutions is critically important – to ensure safe and seamless care delivery. The OPOR Program team has dedicated resources on both fronts—on the CIS Solutions team resources are dedicated to areas such as Patient Identity Encounter Management, Laboratory Medicine, Diagnostic Imagining, Oncology, Pharmacy, and a well-rounded Clinical/Departmental Team. From a Technology and Integration aspect, the team focuses on all aspects of integration and interfaces, data migration, testing and reporting. By working closely with other OPOR team members and subject matter experts provincially, this team will be ensuring that patient care is fully supported with robust workflows and functionality to support down streams. Technology is being leveraged to the highest degree, with the intent to provide a seamless experience when delivering patient care.
As we move further through the CIS design process and the development of OPOR overall, our team is available to present to your groups. We value the feedback received during presentations, and the opportunity to share information is very important. To schedule a presentation, or if you have other questions about OPOR you can contact us at CMIO@nshealth.ca.
