CST’s Quality and Professional Practice Advisory Group has selected an initial 25 Interdisciplinary Plans of Care (IPOCs), from more than 1200 that exist today across VCH, PHSA and PHC, for inclusion in the new clinical information system.

This was a major collaborative achievement between the three Health Organizations. It was spearheaded by the Professional Practice leads Rosa Hart (PHC) as well as Alison Swalwell-Franks (PHSA), and Lorraine Blackburn (VCH).

These plans are important because they help to coordinate care by ensuring the entire interdisciplinary team understands specific problems or clinical conditions pertaining to the patient.

“The new clinical information system will automatically suggest screening questions to ask the patient on admission and a plan of care may be suggested following this action. The care team can then choose to implement the plan of care and customize it if necessary,” explains Rosa Hart, who is currently supporting the CST Clinical Documentation Design team.

“At the moment we do not have an automated process for plans of care and this move to an electronic model will help increase efficiency and consistency, and subsequently provide safer patient care.”

“The process included assessing the plans against set criteria, including: a quality rating, alignment with best practice and adherence to Ministry of Health requirements. The degree of overlap between the Health Organizations was also a major consideration and we ultimately chose the plans that represented the greatest impact for our efforts,” says Rosa.

This is just the first step. The Clinical Documentation Design team  is now working with content experts, from groups across VCH, PHSA and PHC, to establish a working group for each identified Interdisciplinary Plan of Care. More plans will be identified for inclusion in the future.

Christine Jerrett, the Clinical Documentation Design Team Manager for the CST project says the biggest challenge now is transitioning to a new way of thinking.

“We need to work out how to do what we currently do in an electronic system including how to best utilize the new functionality at our disposal.”

Background information

• Clinical & Systems Transformation (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 were 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 Kelle Payne, Executive Director, Transformation Lead (joint) at Kelle.Payne@vch.ca and Donna Stanton, Executive Director, Transformation Lead (joint) at Donna.Stanton@vch.ca