Summit Healthcare Integration Technology Aids in Canadian Provincial Health Initiatives

The Challenge:

Over twenty of our client hospitals in Ontario and eight Regional Health Authorities in New Brunswick were faced with meeting Ministry of Health and provincial government reporting mandates. The first major initiative was to report on patient wait times in major health service areas such as emergency, diagnostic imaging and operating room. The goal of this reporting was to increase access to information and reduce wait times resulting in better patient care and greater department efficiency.
Complimentary initiatives specifically in the Ontario province included reporting patient statistics and results to a centralized Ministry of Health database accessed and shared by fourteen different LHIN’s (local health information networks). Each of the LHIN’s included acute care, rehabilitation, long- term care and community providers. Cancer care reporting which needed to include anatomical pathology findings and full Laboratory information exchange known as the OLIS project were being mandated by the Ministry of Health and the facilities needed to deliver this information.
Members of the various LHIN’s and Regional Health Authorities were now faced with exchanging data into one centralized database from multiple different sources with different reporting structures and data transfer exchanges including XML. They needed to find a technology vendor fluent in secure data transmission and MEDITECH Health Information Technology that had the professional services experience to support the above initiatives.

The Solution:

The Summit Healthcare Express Connect interface engine technology coupled with professional services met the interoperability needs for all provincials and patient care centers mentioned above. Summit Express Connect sat as the broker for the data exchange allowing facilities to leverage their MEDITECH or other vendor system interfaces to report data to meet the Ministry of Health initiatives. Through secure HL7 data transmission, information was readily exchanged from the patient care sites and delivered to both the Ministry of Health (Wait time initiatives) and the centralized database for cancer and Laboratory reporting.
By partnering with one integration vendor the twenty Ontario hospitals and eight Regional Health New Brunswick Authorities could easily manage the data exchange initiatives by understanding the technology in place and having direct Summit Healthcare engineers to tweak each facilities needs for data exchange.

Engagement Highlights:

• Twenty Ontario hospitals and eight Regional Health Authorities in New Brunswick were able to meet the Ministry of Health requirements for wait time reporting with one solution

• Cancer care reporting for pathology and general Laboratory information was accomplished securely, on time and on budget leveraging the Summit Express Connect interface engine technology.

• Utilized Summit Healthcare professional services for interface management including augmenting internal project resources