VCH is pleased to announce the launch of the eCommunityNEXT Project.

VCH has made significant investment in the PARIS system to provide community clinicians with a tool for client care documentation, and is further ahead than any other Health Authority in B.C. with our electronic documentation in community. PARIS is the principal electronic health record for community clients and has over 535,000 active client records (approximately 1 million total client records) and over 5,500 active users in over 100 locations.

The mandate of the eCommunityNEXT Project is to undertake a Community Clinical and Systems Transformation, building upon the foundation that has been created. The project will enable us to standardize and streamline workflow within and across programs, improve community analytics and management reporting, and address the current user and technical limitations of PARIS.

What’s involved?

The project scope over the next two years incorporates three integrated streams of work:

1. Standardize and streamline workflow within and across programs, including operational reports, clinical assessments and forms and care planning processes.

2. Community analytics and management reporting, to support better decision making, stable indicators and dashboards and timely reports to CIHI and MoH.

3. PARIS v. 6 system design, build and test, with better look and feel, easier navigation, a reduction in duplication of information and enhanced information sharing and improved functionality.

Who’s involved?

The eCommunityNEXT project team is comprised of an inter-disciplinary team from Clinical Operations, Clinical Transformation, Decision Support and IMITS, working in partnership with Civica, our PARIS application vendor.

Alignment to VCH True North

In alignment with VCH’s True North strategic objective to Provide the Best Care, the eCommunityNEXT Project supports our strategic goals to: 1.2 – Improve patient outcomes and reduce unnecessary variation in care through clinical and system transformation (CST), and 1.3 – Link the electronic health record across all sectors.

By streamlining how we provide care across all Community portfolios and implementing a significant upgrade to PARIS, our health care providers will have a greater level of accurate, consistent, real-time information in one sharable client record as well as better tools to support point-of-care decision making.

The comprehensive client data produced as a result of this work will drive program planning and care decisions toward better illness prevention and wellness promotion—ultimately reducing client dependence on the acute care system.

Improving the community analytics capabilities is a key part of our Community Systems strategy to better support our clients and the health care system as a whole.

Governance

The eCommunity Steering Committee is the primary governance body for community clinical information systems and has developed a vision and high level roadmap to support integrated, client centered care.

The eCommunityNEXT Project is the first step identified in that roadmap which will support VCH Community in reaching a future systems vision of community systems that support the seamless, integrated care across Acute, Ambulatory, Residential, Community, Primary Care, External Agencies and other Health Authorities and client interaction in care planning.

For more information please contact eCommunityNEXT@vch.ca.