Experts Discuss How to Innovate Health care

Did you know that in Canada, waiting for health care costs Canadians more than $5-billion a year? For example, a patient waits six months to see a specialist only to find out they were waiting for the wrong type of specialist. Or, a patient ready for discharge blocks an expensive hospital bed while they wait for space to become available in the less expensive community health services they require. Imagine having $5-billion to improve our health care. We have been tackling this problem since 2001 by automating and streamlining transitions of care. We replaced the faxing of forms and referral letters with a system that matches patients to appropriate programs and services. Our objective is to ensure the right patient gets to the right destination, at the right time with the right information. Each patient transition has distinct priorities, complex handoffs, exceptions, patient choice options, waitlists, and legislation to consider. Our service has been described as patient air traffic control, or Expedia for health, but neither of these analogies does justice to the complexity involved nor the consequences of getting it wrong. These are human lives, not airplanes and hotels. In the near future, family doctors will refer patients to required services directly from their electronic system, and patients will leave with these appointments in hand. Patients struggling with mental health concerns will be able to self-refer into assessment and outreach programs. The future is brighter. Visit strata5B.com to share your thoughts on how to use 5-billion dollars to improve healthcare access.

Canada’s total annual spend on health care per person is $4,351 USD. The average among similar developed countries is $3,453. In other words, we are already spending more than most other industrialized countries and yet Canada ranks poorly in access to care for many health care services, like specialist appointments and surgical care. Year-over-year growth in health care spending in Canada and elsewhere is widely viewed as unsustainable and does not seem to be improving patients’ experiences. If patient centred care is to be achieved in Canada, the delivery of health care, like other industries, needs to better leverage information technologies to deliver faster, more agile, less expensive, and safer health care. For example, to this day most referrals from one physician to another are sent by fax. The health care system does not manage referrals in order to send patients to physicians, hospitals, or clinics that may be able to provide faster service. Although billions of dollars have been spent in Canada to reduce surgical wait times, the results have been underwhelming. Referral management and surgical wait times are both areas of access to care that can be dramatically improved with the use of modern information technology. Simple things like giving surgeons, their staff, hospitals, and regional health authorities web-based dashboards displaying in real time every patient waiting for surgery — and flagging long waiting patients — has proven to reduce wait times. Replacing faxed referrals with eReferrals with air traffic-like management of the system can balance referral loads across the health care system more efficiently and again reduce wait times. These Canadian made technologies are simultaneously good for patients, health care providers, the public purse, and would reinforce a patient-first approach to health care.

Effective referrals are important to help patients transition safely through the system. The impact of poor referral systems can include a delay in timely care, cost as tests and treatments may need to be repeated, and ultimately the patient’s safety. Active patient involvement in the referral process helps with successful communication and more effective referrals. As a family doctor, my patients often ask me about the status of their referral — waiting is hard and uncertainty only makes it harder.”

Not knowing, feeling left out; it can be frustrating. Patients often feel this way when their family doctor refers them to the specialist. We all know faxing is unreliable. Faxes get lost. You might wonder: Did my doctor send the letter yet? If they got the fax did they look at it? How come we haven’t heard back? I hope it isn’t serious, I’m afraid to call and disturb the office. Maybe I’ll wait another couple of weeks. Maybe I’m on a waitlist. Maybe I missed the call. Did they forget me? Granted, most of the time things work out, but it can take many phone calls to follow up and double check just to be sure. Even so, waiting and not knowing causes too much unnecessary anxiety. However sometimes, things just fall through the cracks, and patients who fall through the cracks may be harmed or even die because of that delay. Today with modern forms of communication there is no reason for the patient to be left out of the loop. To learn more about how ereferrals can save lives through accuracy and timeliness, please visit ezReferral.