Point-of-care staff need access to information that is easy to find and up-to-date. Currently, there are four clinical PolicyNets – Regional, Coastal, Richmond and VA – and multiple individual intranet sites that store clinical practice documents (CPDs) and other resources. Information to guide clinical practice is also inconsistent across the communities of care and scattered in different locations. As a result, point-of-care staff often feel frustrated by the current system when trying to find documents.

Why is standardization important for health care?

Standardizing clinical support documents is not only a key priority for VCH, it is also necessary as we prepare for CST.  Standardization helps improve the quality and consistency of care – the best way, every day – and is one of the primary reasons driving the CST project. The one Regional PolicyNet site will provide consistent, up-to-date and easy-to-find clinical resources to support best practices and safe, high-quality care.

Past work and moving forward

Work on regionalizing PolicyNet is well underway with existing documents on the Coastal site under review by the Professional Practice team, managers and educators. The Coastal PolicyNet site will no longer be accessible on June 1, 2017, and documents that are still required by point-of-care staff will be migrated over to the Regional PolicyNet site.

For more information about the PolicyNet project, please contact:

• Zerlina Chan, Practice Initiatives Lead, Professional Practice
• Christy Benson Aguirre,Practice Initiatives Lead, Professional Practice
• Mary-Ann Taylor, Practice Initiatives Lead, Professional Practice