Four acute hospitals comprising the CARE4 partnership in Central Ontario were recently awarded the prestigious Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) Stage 6 validation from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), recognizing their use of digital technology to advance data exchange and interoperability for improved patient engagement and clinical efficiencies.
The CARE4 partnership consists of Collingwood General and Marine Hospital (CGMH); Georgian Bay General Hospital (GBGH); Headwaters Health Care Centre (HHCC); and Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH), and uses a single instance of the MEDITECH Expanse EHR.
“Achieving Stage 6 means a lot to us,” said RVH Vice President of Digital Health and Regional Chief Information Officer Dave Brewin. “It means we’ve reached a level of digital maturity that allows us to deliver excellent patient care through our digital toolsets, primarily within MEDITECH Expanse.”
The Stage 6 milestone marks yet another impressive accomplishment for the hospitals, which were the first Canadian MEDITECH customers to go live with Expanse Ambulatory. They later followed by launching a single patient portal across their acute hospitals and ambulatory clinics, helping to lay part of the foundation for Stage 6 certification.
Brewin emphasized how the portal has enabled a new level of patient engagement.“The patient portal is a wonderful tool, enabling patients to be a real part of the journey and an active member of the care team because they now have the same information at their fingertips.”
The Expanse EHR platform has also enabled the partnership hospitals to collect and share more data than ever before. “We have an extensive amount of data now, and using that data in effective ways is something that we keep ratcheting up more and more,” says Brewin. “It will open up opportunities for improved research and collaboration with our startup community.”
Brewin highlighted the exceptional logistical coordination that went into attaining the HIMSS recognition. “This has been an awesome team effort across four separate organizations to move together in lockstep to get to this EMRAM 6 certification.”
