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Indicators & Change Ideas

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Explore the quality indicators being tracked by health care organizations in Ontario through Quality Improvement Plans (QIPs) and change ideas to help improve them. Connect with others to share your experiences and ideas of your own.

INDICATORS & CHANGE IDEAS

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Percentage of clinicians within the primary care practice utilizing provincial digital solutions

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The persistence of paper- and fax-based workflows, as well as suboptimal digital solutions that are implemented inconsistently across the health care system, is a significant contributor to administrative burden. This can lead to:

  • Patient safety risks posed by delays in receiving timely and appropriate care due to faxing errors and illegible information
  • Slower access to care caused by unnecessary waits from slower processing time, fax backlog, and extra follow-ups associated with fax errors and misdirects
  • Privacy breaches, including misdirected faxes, which accounted for 50% of the complaints about health care privacy breaches made to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario in 2021
  • Patient safety risks posed by delays to receiving timely and appropriate care because of faxing errors and illegible information.

Key resources

Change Ideas

Implement digital health tools

  • eConsult is a secure digital health tool that provides family physicians, nurse practitioners, and midwives with timely access to specialist advice that they may need to deliver care to their patients, often eliminating the need for an in-person specialist visit.
  • e-Prescribing enables prescribers and pharmacists to transmit prescriptions electronically and enables prescribers to electronically transmit a prescription directly from an electronic medical record (EMR) to the pharmacy management system (PMS) of a patient’s pharmacy of choice. ePrescribing also enables clinical communications, making it easier for prescribers and pharmacists to clarify questions about a patient’s prescription.
  • eReferral (electronic referral) enables quick and secure referrals between primary care clinicians, specialists, and organizations across the province, reducing administrative burden and allowing clinicians to spend more time delivering patient care.
  • Health Report Manager (HRM) facilitates secure electronic transfer of patient records between hospitals, independent health facilities, specialty clinics, and community-based primary care clinicians (such as physicians and nurse practitioners) using an OntarioMD-certified EMR system. It reduces the reliance on paper- and fax-based workflows by adding patient reports, such as narrative, text-based medical records, and diagnostic imaging, directly into a patient’s record within their clinician’s EMR. This provides clinicians with timely access to the clinical reports they need to make informed decisions and empowers care teams to follow up with patients sooner to ensure seamless continuity of care. 
  • Online appointment booking solutions enable patients to book in-person, video, or telephone appointments electronically, by choosing a date and time and receiving an automated appointment confirmation, all in a self-serve environment available 24/7. In addition to booking appointments, online appointment booking solutions offer other beneficial features such as automated email, text message, and voice reminders.
  • Ontario Laboratories Information System (OLIS) is a secure digital health tool that provides authorized health care providers with access to patients’ laboratory test orders and results, both past and present, from hospitals and public health and community labs through 1 platform. The centralization of information enables a patient’s results to follow them as they move between different care settings (e.g., from a hospital to long-term care), and enables health care providers to make more informed, timely, and safe care decisions. OLIS also reduces laboratory errors caused by illegibility or misinterpretation of requested lab orders, improves the turnaround time for lab results, and enables patient orders and results to be added directly into an EMR. 

How to Get Started

Support is available for primary care practices across all 6 Ontario Health regions. Each region is equipped with a Regional Digital Health Team that can:

  • Answer your questions or requests for information about digital health tools
  • Provide guidance around digital health tools
  • Facilitate connections to enable digital health tool sign-up and onboarding

To get started, contact your Regional Digital Health Team:

If you don’t know your Ontario Health region, email the Pb4P Change Management and Adoption Team for assistance.

Percentage of clinicians within the primary care practice utilizing provincial digital solutions

0 Comments

The persistence of paper- and fax-based workflows, as well as suboptimal digital solutions that are implemented inconsistently across the health care system, is a significant contributor to administrative burden. This can lead to:

  • Patient safety risks posed by delays in receiving timely and appropriate care due to faxing errors and illegible information
  • Slower access to care caused by unnecessary waits from slower processing time, fax backlog, and extra follow-ups associated with fax errors and misdirects
  • Privacy breaches, including misdirected faxes, which accounted for 50% of the complaints about health care privacy breaches made to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario in 2021
  • Patient safety risks posed by delays to receiving timely and appropriate care because of faxing errors and illegible information.

Key resources

Change Ideas

Implement digital health tools

  • eConsult is a secure digital health tool that provides family physicians, nurse practitioners, and midwives with timely access to specialist advice that they may need to deliver care to their patients, often eliminating the need for an in-person specialist visit.
  • e-Prescribing enables prescribers and pharmacists to transmit prescriptions electronically and enables prescribers to electronically transmit a prescription directly from an electronic medical record (EMR) to the pharmacy management system (PMS) of a patient’s pharmacy of choice. ePrescribing also enables clinical communications, making it easier for prescribers and pharmacists to clarify questions about a patient’s prescription.
  • eReferral (electronic referral) enables quick and secure referrals between primary care clinicians, specialists, and organizations across the province, reducing administrative burden and allowing clinicians to spend more time delivering patient care.
  • Health Report Manager (HRM) facilitates secure electronic transfer of patient records between hospitals, independent health facilities, specialty clinics, and community-based primary care clinicians (such as physicians and nurse practitioners) using an OntarioMD-certified EMR system. It reduces the reliance on paper- and fax-based workflows by adding patient reports, such as narrative, text-based medical records, and diagnostic imaging, directly into a patient’s record within their clinician’s EMR. This provides clinicians with timely access to the clinical reports they need to make informed decisions and empowers care teams to follow up with patients sooner to ensure seamless continuity of care. 
  • Online appointment booking solutions enable patients to book in-person, video, or telephone appointments electronically, by choosing a date and time and receiving an automated appointment confirmation, all in a self-serve environment available 24/7. In addition to booking appointments, online appointment booking solutions offer other beneficial features such as automated email, text message, and voice reminders.
  • Ontario Laboratories Information System (OLIS) is a secure digital health tool that provides authorized health care providers with access to patients’ laboratory test orders and results, both past and present, from hospitals and public health and community labs through 1 platform. The centralization of information enables a patient’s results to follow them as they move between different care settings (e.g., from a hospital to long-term care), and enables health care providers to make more informed, timely, and safe care decisions. OLIS also reduces laboratory errors caused by illegibility or misinterpretation of requested lab orders, improves the turnaround time for lab results, and enables patient orders and results to be added directly into an EMR. 

How to Get Started

Support is available for primary care practices across all 6 Ontario Health regions. Each region is equipped with a Regional Digital Health Team that can:

  • Answer your questions or requests for information about digital health tools
  • Provide guidance around digital health tools
  • Facilitate connections to enable digital health tool sign-up and onboarding

To get started, contact your Regional Digital Health Team:

If you don’t know your Ontario Health region, email the Pb4P Change Management and Adoption Team for assistance.

Aaron Miller True