There’s a lot of talk about keeping patients at the centre of care to improve outcomes, but that can only be possible when healthcare providers see the full patient story. Data sharing barriers still exist, making it difficult for providers to deliver more informed, whole-person care.
When transitioning between providers or settings, patients feel supported when care teams have the technology in place to easily see a summary of their care journey, eliminating the need to repeat their medical history, rely on their memory, or carry their medical documents.
Creating a more coordinated and holistic approach to care starts by enabling data to flow into clinical workflows at the point of care — no matter where that care is being delivered. Using one-to-many rather than one-to-one data sharing ensures providers have the pertinent information they need, alleviating the burden of retrieving vast amounts of fragmented patient data from different systems.
These were the driving forces behind our development of MEDITECH’s Traverse Exchange Canada, a first-of-its-kind, cloud-based interoperability network. Traverse Exchange Canada is unique in that it provides one conduit for securely accessing patient information from other EHRs as well as provincial assets. Provincial assets are specialized repositories for patient data such as lab results or medication histories, and they require separate access and viewing tools.
Traverse Exchange Canada is a networked highway that provides users with streamlined access to relevant patient data from a variety of sources in the healthcare space, with the option to consume this data into their local EHRs. The data presents natively within our Expanse solution, as we’ve embedded viewing tools to provide a seamless presentation of data, eliminating the need to launch and sign in to each provincial asset to retrieve information.
The Traverse Exchange Canada network provides convenient, secure, and meaningful ‘one-stop shopping’. Here’s a look at how we’re making data available from across healthcare settings and organizations to enable valuable clinical insights into the patient’s care.
- PointClickCare plays a key role in the long term care delivery model in Ontario. Ontario Health views long term care data integration as critical to reducing readmissions, duplicate testing, as well as errors that can occur during care transitions — this was the genesis of Ontario Health’s Project AMPLIFI. We have configured over 350 PointClickCare facilities onto our network, with more to follow.
Discharging patients from the hospital to their next setting can be a complex process and there’s tremendous value in providing the details of the patient’s care, such as allergies, conditions, and medications, including the last time medications were administered. Making this information readily available ensures safer, more efficient transitions of care and enables a better experience for patients and their families.
- The Digital Health Drug Repository (DHDR) stores available patient medication histories. We continue to work with Ontario Health to establish its DHDR asset as an endpoint on our network. Currently, data within the DHDR is built off of claims data, which can be limited in scope. To improve upon this, Ontario Health launched the Comprehensive Medical Records for Ontarians (CMRO) project, designed to include administered medications documented during a patient’s hospital experience. With the Traverse Exchange Canada network in place, we are well-positioned to respond to this initiative by enabling customers to contribute patient-specific medication details from the electronic administration record. Hospitals on our network will have the connection in place to send CMRO data to the DHDR. We will pilot this feature at Queensway Carleton Hospital at the end of the year, after which it will be made available to the rest of our Ontario Expanse customers.
This model is endorsed by Ontario Health as hospital data sharing can bolster the DHDR data set with real-time medication details. It also further demonstrates the impact of the networking effect — enabling all customers to send data with the benefit of one connection.
Collaborating with Ontario Health on future provincial assets
- Provincial Provider Registry - an authoritative source for provider profiles and credentials. We anticipate our customers will benefit from a connection to the provider registry in order to check provider licensure and credentialing.
- The Acute and Community Clinical Data Repository (acCDR), also known as Connecting Ontario, is rich with reports and data shared by hospitals. With our network, routing data along to endpoint destinations like Connecting Ontario could ease the number of connections currently involved at the expense of our customers' technical and engineering teams. We’ll pursue this in 2024, and it again speaks to leveraging the strength of one network connecting to many endpoints.
- Ontario Laboratories Information System (OLIS) Standard - a repository of lab tests and results from hospitals, community labs, and public health labs. We’re establishing the OLIS asset on our network so that lab data can be displayed within the Expanse EHR, adding another convenient and important endpoint for our clinician users. We expect to have this at a pilot site in fall 2023.
- Oracle Health eHub HIE - we’re currently in discussions with Oracle Health customers who are part of the TransForm Shared Service Organization to connect the eHub HIE to our network. This will enable mutual patient data sharing between MEDITECH sites connected to our network and Oracle Health sites connected to its HIE. This will get underway in fall 2023, and will be a game changer for data sharing among EHR vendors in Ontario.
- Primary care practice vendors - we’re exploring the connection opportunities to primary care practice vendors so that they and their patients can benefit from seamlessly exchanging patient information to better facilitate transitions of care.
Improving care starts with sharing across settings
The ability to quickly find a patient’s medical record regardless of where the patient’s past care was delivered speaks to the power and efficiency of an integrated record locator service. Traverse Exchange Canada is powered by Health Gorilla, who has been a tremendous partner, working closely with us to advance our network. The data accessed is relevant information to support the care documented within MEDITECH’s Expanse EHR and other EHRs connected to the network.
Ontario Health, charged with connecting and modernizing the province’s health care system, promotes the ‘collect once and share many’ approach, aiming to make the health system more efficient to support better outcomes. MEDITECH customers in Ontario are the first jurisdiction eligible to access Traverse Exchange Canada, with others to follow.
Throughout 2023, we’re focused on connecting our Ontario customers, long term care facilities, and other EHR vendors, while also delivering access to provincial asset data that is both efficient and convenient. We’re evaluating how to provide our network benefits to our customers in British Columbia and other jurisdictions, as all customers will benefit from this data-sharing model. We’ll continue to explore this in 2024.
Working together, we can break down the barriers that too often prevent a patient’s records from following them wherever they go. This approach places patients at the centre of care and can improve outcomes.
Find out how we're connecting clinicians, hospitals, and health authorities with more efficient EHR tools and integration that spans all settings.
