Victoria Morris, a Clinical Nurse Educator at Mount Saint Joseph Hospital, looks forward to a future where she can access a more complete patient record, something that will become a reality as a result of the Clinical & Systems Transformation (CST) project.

“One of the biggest things that is going to change is that we will be sharing patient records across the three Health Organizations,” she says, drawing on her current experience within the CST Clinical Documentation / Inpatient Orders and Results design team.

“It won’t matter which hospital our patients go to across VCH, PHSA and PHC, the same information will be there.”

With numerous systems and processes currently in place across the three Health Organizations, building the foundation for reliable and accurate shared patient information in the future is no small task.

“CST is funding four key projects to ensure we have a strong platform we can build upon,” says Serge Music, CST Technical Transformation Project Manager. “While each project is different, all are focused on improving data quality, access and our ability to analyze that data.”

CST projects designed to ensure we have reliable and accurate data are currently underway, and include:

• Document imaging (scanning): Patient records that remain on paper after go-live will be electronically captured and combined with the patient’s electronic record. This ensures patient documents are accessible electronically, and reduces costs for storage and retrieval of records.

• Legacy data (historical data): Key patient data from multiple systems across VCH, PHSA and PHC will be made viewable from within the new clinical information system, reducing the need to access multiple systems to view patient information.

• Data remediation (amending data): Patient records will be checked against Ministry of Health data, with duplicate entries and errors flagged and amended. This will link new patient data with other records that may exist for the patient, and addresses records that are missing demographic information.

• Data analytics: Our approach to analytics will be shared across the Health Organizations, supporting increased demand for reporting in the future. This project will also make sure we maintain data functionality and reporting during the implementation of CST.

While all these projects have a focus on patient data and technical capabilities, Serge emphasizes that each one has been developed with input and decision making from healthcare professionals.

“Each project has gone through the review and approval of the CST Executive Steering Committee, made up of representatives from the Health Organizations along with our Chief Medical Information Officers. Like all aspects of the CST Project, healthcare professionals will continue to be engaged and consulted on decisions as the projects continue.”

Data, systems, scanning and analytics might not seem like exciting topics for most hands-on healthcare professionals, but for Victoria the benefits of this work are clear.

“It is going to make a patient’s transition from one care facility to the next so much easier,” she says.

“Really, it comes down to safer patient care.”

Background information

• CST is a joint initiative of VCH, PHSA and PHC, and one of the largest and most complex healthcare projects in Canada. It spans across several areas of the continuum of care including: acute care inpatient and outpatient units, ambulatory care and residential care. As well as creating consistent, leading practices, and a shared clinical information system, CST will deliver HIMSS Level 5 functionality.

• Clinical design teams, made up of hundreds of highly-skilled, multi-disciplinary professionals from across the three Health Organizations and Team IBM, started work on April 7, 2014. These teams are tasked with designing our future workflows, based on leading practices. In doing so, they are defining the requirements for our new clinical information system.

Visit CSTproject.ca for more information and regular updates, and to submit suggestions for future articles. If you have questions or feedback, please email info@CSTproject.ca or contact Donna Stanton, CST Executive Director and Transformation Lead, VCH at Donna.Stanton@vch.ca