The role of health data in supporting better patient outcomes

By Dr. Rashaad Bhyat

As a primary care physician in a practice that sees a lot of elderly patients with complex care needs, I’m often working with a range of specialists to deliver care. This means my patients go through a number of transitions in care, which can be more complicated than people may realize, as data doesn’t always flow efficiently across our health care system.

That’s why I was encouraged to see an increased focus on health data included within the federal government proposal on health care funding that was recently accepted by Canada’s Premiers. I know from my clinical experience that digital tools can play a powerful role in supporting patient care by enabling more comprehensive access to health data.

I recently saw a patient for a follow-up appointment, and we were missing two specialist consultation records that I have no way of accessing except through a fax request. If I’m lucky, I’ll have the records within a few weeks and will then be able to have a more comprehensive discussion with my patient on a follow-up care plan. Unfortunately, I’m not alone in these struggles. Research commissioned by Canada Health Infoway found that 82 per cent of clinicians report not always having a summary of patient care received outside their practice setting, with 92 per cent wasting time searching for patient information from other care settings.

Any time an element of a patient’s care is transferred to another member of their care team, whether to a specialist, pharmacist or allied health provider, it takes much more time than most Canadians might realize. And this doesn’t even consider the approximately five million Canadians who do not have a family physician and may rely on walk-in clinics or emergency departments for care, without the ability to access their medical records.

Consider for example an elderly patient transitioning to community care from a hospital, after experiencing a stroke. Elements of the patient’s history and care will be split across my office, the hospital, specialist teams and perhaps even home care teams. Without an efficient way to share this information, it places a heavy administrative burden on an already-stretched health care team.

These situations will only increase in frequency as our population ages. In approximately eight years, Canada will experience a rapid increase in the number of people older than 85. These are our most vulnerable citizens, with many comorbidities and highly complex care needs. My colleagues and I already spend more time than we have on charting, specialist referrals, forms, coordinating preventive care, and oth- er time-intensive tasks. With a more connected health care system, we can get ahead of some needless administrative inefficiencies, and ensure that more time can be spent on providing care to patients.

This is where the work I do as Clinician Leader at Canada Health Infoway comes into play. We are excited to partner with the federal government, provinces and territories, the private sector, and the health workforce to co-author the next chapter of health system modernization. Improved interoperability – the ability of health technology systems to “speak the same language” based on the use of common standards – is a key piece of this, as it enables better access to, and secure sharing of, patient health data.

In a more connected health care system, clinicians and patients benefit through better and more integrated care delivery across care settings, more effective communication across care teams, improved service delivery, and more efficient workflows. Secure collection, sharing and use of health information will enable system improvements through the application of advanced analytics. A digitally connected health system will also save time for, and reduce the stress of, our health care providers, who continue to bear the brunt of delivering care on the front lines.

I was pleased to see our federal health minister recognize this in his comments a few weeks ago, noting that “we must work together to collect, share, and use health information to strengthen and improve the delivery of health care while continuing to support our health care workers.” I couldn’t agree more. I welcome the opportunity to work more efficiently with colleagues across the health care spectrum, using better health information sharing to enable all of us to spend more time where it matters most – on patient care. ■ H