Staff at Montreal’s Jean-Talon Hospital are getting their first real hands-on experience with Quebec’s new digital health record system on the fifth day of the pilot rollout.
Health-care workers at Jean-Talon say while the transition still comes with a learning curve – after years of relying heavily on pen and paper – the new system has already been shrinking delays.
“It helps us enormously,” said nurse Emmanuel Mamadou Coly.
Eighty-nine-year-old Cécile Bossé has been hospitalized for two-and-a-half months while receiving treatment for multiple health issues, including diabetes. She’s among the many patients whose medication is now verified digitally through Quebec’s new health record system.
Bossé says she’s already noticed a difference in how care is being delivered.
“The service is faster,” she said.
The pilot rollout, currently underway in two regional health authorities, is designed to centralize patient information digitally.
It also adds another layer of safety to patient care, says Mamadou Coly.
“I’m now going to scan the medications one by one,” the nurse explained, walking reporters through the new system. “If there’s a medication that doesn’t match, I’ll scan it, and EPIC will alert me that it’s not the right medication.
“Before, I had a FADM, that is, a medication administration sheet, and it was in paper. And so I had to plan out the medication. I’d look and look, but if I really wasn’t paying attention – we’re human, we make mistakes – I could make errors.”
Related:
Now patients are identified by their digital health profiles linked to barcode bracelets. That information stored within a database powered by service provider EPIC Systems, where it’s accessible to health-care workers across departments.
“They’ll automatically be able to see where the patient is, what assessments have been done, the follow-ups, everything. And we didn’t have that before,” Mamadou Coly said.
The project, known as the DSN – from dossier santé numérique in French – aims to digitize medical records across Quebec’s health network, beginning with pilot sites at a CIUSSS in Nord-de-l’île-de-Montréal and another in Mauricie-Centre-du-Québec.
For Jean-Talon Hospital anesthesiologist Katherine Chabot, one of the biggest changes is how quickly doctors can now access a patient’s medical history.
“If you want to consult previous notes, then you would have to ask the archives to get the physical medical record,” Chabot said.
Now, doctors say information that once needed searching through paper files can be pulled up almost instantly — even while treating another patient.
“While I’m doing a surgery, I can already have access and prepare for my next patient, look for information,” she said.
It’s been less than a week since the rollout began on May 9.
Hospital staff say they underwent weeks of training beforehand, adding the task at hand now involves gradually transferring patient information from the old system to the new one.
“We have enough support also since the launching of the DSN, but really the best way to learn is to practise,” Chabot said.
