The Netcare Electronic Health Record (EHR) offers a cradle-to-grave, read-only, aggregated view of information from multiple databases about key health events in an individual’s life; information that any health care provider may need in order to serve an individual. Among that core information might be summaries of key events such as hospitalizations, emergency room visits and operations.
The Connect Care initiative integrates information for all Alberta Health Services, partner organization and affiliate clinic sites. Previously, Netcare's access to facility information was patchy, depending upon local arrangements for things like dictation and transcription. Connect Care brings all emergency rooms, acute care facilities and major procedural sites to consistent digital documentation. This can only improve prospects for Netcare to fulfill its informational purpose.
On the other hand, Connect Care amasses huge amounts of clinical documentation. This must be carefully selected before sharing with Netcare, or the Netcare purpose could be overwhelmed by information not aligned with the EHR value proposition.
Connect Care will share summative documents with Netcare. These include emergency room reports, admission histories, discharge summaries, transition summaries, consultations and operative reports. Summative documents can stand on their own, as they pull together and appraise relevant information at a single point in time.
Connect Care will not share formative or transactional documentation. This includes progress notes, procedure notes and other documentation that cannot stand on its own, but depends upon its placement in the larger clinical information system to make sense.
Netcare's interoperation capacity needs to be enhanced to be accept all the summative documentation that Connect Care makes available. Early improvements will be noted with consistent emergency, admission, consult and discharge summary sharing. Later, outpatient consult letters will be consistently captured.
The bottom line: Connect Care will make it easier for Netcare to have complete information in the categories it collates.