South West LHIN eHealth Initiatives
SPIRE HRM Project
The South West Physicians Office Interface to Regional Electronic Medical Record (SPIRE) Hospital Report Manager (HRM) project provides a secure electronic interface between hospitals’ Electronic Patient Records (EPR) and participating regional physicians’ offices, allowing discharge information, radiology reports, lab results and notes to be delivered directly into physicians' EMRs, replacing faxes and savings thousands of hours of filing time. More than 400 physicians are now subscribed to the interface and the South West LHIN is working closely with eHealth Ontario and OntarioMD to increase that number. In the interim, the LHIN and local Health Service Providers (HSPs) are working towards infrastructure upgrades that will enable doctors from across the province to use the interface. This work is starting with physicians’ offices in the Erie St. Clair LHIN.
ABOVE: An easy to understand video explaining the SPIRE HRM project which enables physicians to receive patients' hospital records directly into their Electronic Medical Record solution.
Alternate Level of Care Resource Matching & Referral
The South West LHIN’s Alternative Level of Care (ALC) Resource Matching and Referral (RM&R) project is part of a larger, four-LHIN initiative to move patients out of acute facilities and into more appropriate environments for their on-going care, using a protocol that will ensure consistency and standardization across the province. Helping health care providers match patients with alternate resources will improve hospital bed utilization and reduce emergency department wait times, one of the three clinical priorities identified in Ontario’s eHealth Strategy.
For more information, click here.
connecting South West Ontario (cSWO)
The cSWO Project is in the process of integrating healthcare systems acros the Erie St. Clair, Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant, South West and Waterloo Wellington LHINs. Building on the success and investments made in local, regional and provincial initiatives, cSWO is working closely with stakeholders to address specific local and regional needs to allow electronic patient health inforamtion to be seamlessly and securely shared. When it's complete, the project will be comprised of robust, scalable and re-usable building blocks capable of exchanging clincial data for better, timelier and more coordinated care, accelerating the delivery of electronic health records to the populace.
Integrated Assessment Record (IAR) Project
The Integrated Assessment Record (IAR) is an initiative within Community Care Information Management (CCIM) to allow assessment information to be viewed by authorized health service providers across care settings. The Integrated Assessment Record application is currently being implemented in Local Health Integrated Networks (LHINs) across Ontario. The Erie St. Clair LHIN is leading implementation with our SWO cluster.
eShift Project
The Community Care Access Centre’s eShift project uses technology to extend the reach of health care services, dollars and personnel - without increasing costs. The initiative connects an enhanced-skill Personal Support Worker providing overnight home care to clients with complex health care needs with a nurse via a web-enabled phone; PSWs in the home literally become the eyes, ears and hands of a nurse who can support up to four locations at a time. For more information on eShift, click here.
For information on provincial intiatives in the South West LHIN click here.
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