Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre proudly announces the implementation of the first phase of a comprehensive Regional Electronic Health Record (REHR) on Monday, November 8, 2004.

Chief Information Officer with TBRHSC, Susanne Flett, says, “the development is exciting as this first phase provides seven of our regional hospitals with core systems. The long-term goal is to build a full REHR within the hospitals and then to extend integration to other community partners. The ultimate vision is to enable our partners – irrespective of patient location, timely, seamless sharing of patient information across the healthcare spectrum from physician offices, public health clinics to specialized tertiary care”.

The Northwest Health Network is comprised of 13 hospitals, the District Health Council, Community Care Access Centres, the District Health Units, Community Health Centres, the Regional Integrated Cancer Centre, and George Jeffrey Children’s Treatment Centre. The Network has received partial funding to implement the first phase of this initiative from the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care. Using a unique cost-sharing framework, the Network is leveraging existing information technology (IT) investments from Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre and St. Joseph’s Care Group. The strategy enables smaller organizations that could not otherwise afford to implement the initial building blocks that are required to begin to participate in the sharing of clinical information. The Network has provided funds to hire additional staff in IT and IS to support the regional initiative and extend the level of IT and IS support. In addition, funding was provided to purchase additional hardware and network infrastructure to allow the regional sites to connect with the hospitals in Thunder Bay.

The initial phase of the REHR project is the implementation of a core set of applications from Meditech (Medical Information Technology). The applications being implemented are patient registration, central patient index, billing accounts receivable, diagnostic imaging, electronic reports, and clinical results viewing. These applications are essential building blocks in the development of the REHR. Hospitals participating in the first phase of the project are Geraldton District, Manitouwadge General, The McCausland (Terrace Bay), Nipigon District Memorial, and Wilson Memorial General (Marathon). These organizations are scheduled to go “LIVE” in November, 2004. It is expected that Atikokan General Hospital and Red Lake Margaret Cochenour Memorial Hospital will “go LIVE” in February, 2005. A third group: Dryden District General Hospital, Lake of the Woods Hospital (Kenora), Riverside Health Care Facilities (Fort Frances, Emo, Rainy River) and Sioux Lookout Meno Ya-Win Health Centre have deferred implementation in this fiscal year. Although this group has deferred their implementation of the phase I applications, they will be provided with remote access to the REHR to view information collected at the participating partner sites.

For more information, contact:

Karen McDonald
Vice President, Client Services
Healthtec Inc.
416-483-5974, extension 30

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