PARIS is the principal electronic health record for community clients. The system contains more than 535,000 active client records, and holds about 1 million client records in total.

So why is it so difficult and time-consuming to tap into PARIS data and produce and maintain active client lists, asks an AOA Health Team program assistant. There must be a better way — and he has some ideas.

Read on for more and our full response.

Today’s answered question

Editor’s note: For the sake of brevity and patient and client privacy, questions are occasionally edited.

Q. One of the challenges faced by Adult Older Adult Health Teams is keeping lists of active clients up-to-date and accurate. In all of the units that I have worked there have been any number of tasks that require copying one piece of information from one report to another manually. All of the data exists in PARIS, and creating a multicolumn report would allow the process to be sped up, increase accuracy, and provide meta data that could be used to drive leaner management of the system.

I’m currently working as a program assistant, but for 14 years I worked in a software company that developed report writing tools, so I’m coming at this from that perspective.

Each team creates multiple reports that use the same set of data – which clients are active; who is their key provider; and how many resources is that client going to use; which neighbourhood. The current system does not allow for this data to be extracted, and yet, every day managers and care providers use hand drawn pieces of this information to help them manage their time and resources. It is inefficient and inaccurate.

Being able to have an accurate, current listing of all active clients is something that is not currently possible. Being able to see Key Provider and Client Requirements is not currently possible. By generating this one report those would be easily created.

A. Thank you for raising this critical issue of reporting — in fact, your timing is excellent. Your concerns and insights into the inefficiency and inaccuracy of data are particularly helpful as we undertake work to provide client-facing and other staff the information they need to provide quality care and service efficiently.

The eCommunityNEXT Project — launched in February — includes an upgrade to PARIS to provide easier navigation, better functionality, less duplicate information and enhanced information sharing. The project has identified PARIS reports as an important piece of work, and improving reports is part of the project plan, too. Specifically, the project aims to standardize and simplify reports, including operational reports (such as the type you refer to), and management reports (used for resource evaluation and reporting to the Ministry of Health). Custom reports will be considered as well.

This work will start soon, and we’re wondering … would you be interested in contributing to this project, especially when we’re engaging program assistants and looking at reports?

If you’d like to participate or learn more about the eCommunityNEXT Project, we encourage you to contact Debbie Jeske or Janice Lochbaum — or you can always reach the team at: eCommunityNEXT@vch.ca. We appreciate you bringing your ideas forward, and we hope to hear from you again as we start the detailed work to improve PARIS reports. In the meantime, watch for more news about the eCommunityNEXT Project in VCH News and at your home health site.

Got a question?

If you have a question, comment or suggestion, we encourage you to email us what’s on your mind at onevancouver@vch.ca.

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eCommunityNEXT: Our next step towards better care in our community