Connect Care Wave 2 Launch - October 24, 2020

Community practitioners are a significant part of any person’s care team, and it’s vital that they have information and awareness about Connect Care and how it will support and benefit patients. 

To ensure a smooth transition and ongoing delivery of laboratory and diagnostic imaging results, community providers in Alberta who do not use Connect Care as their record of care need to:

• Use Connect Care Identifiers
• Use new requisitions to order labs and diagnostic imaging that can incorporate those identifiers
• Advise AHS of any practice location(s) change, even if short term
• Provide a preferred method for receiving results and other information from AHS and affiliated organizations

Community health care providers continue to use their existing Electronic Medical Records and other processes to manage patient information that is not part of the AHS record of care.

• Alert AHS to provider information changes: AHS.Provider_Requests@ahs.ca
• Connect Care support for non-Connect Care users: ccproviderbridge@ahs.ca

Where is Connect Care the Record of Care?

Starting November 2019, Connect Care will be implemented wherever AHS has responsibility for the record or care or has been contracted to provide health information services. Presently, this includes:

• Hospitals
• AHS Operated Clinics
• AHS Operated Continuing Care facilities
• Cancer Centres
• Addiction & Mental Health
• Homecare
• Public Health
• Calgary Laboratory Services locations
• Alberta Public Laboratories
• Non-AHS practices and clinics supported by AHS information services.
• CapitalCare
• Carewest
• DynaLIFE locations
• Covenant Health

The Connect Care clinical information system is designed to serve primary and all specialty care in all settings for all ages across the continuum of care.

What is Connect Care?

Connect Care is an Alberta Health Services (AHS) initiative that bridges information gaps, healthcare teams and patient needs. The foundation of Connect Care is a provincial clinical information system (CIS). This uses Epic software to integrate complementary systems into a coherent record that spans the continuum of care. Connect Care will replace most of the 1,300 health information systems currently in place across AHS and affiliated organizations, simplifying health information access while preserving the patient story.

Connect Care will improve patient and provider experiences by promoting informational continuity wherever Connect Care is the record of care. Parallel work to align health processes and practices improves relational (communication & collaboration) and knowledge (goals & guidance) continuity. And better connections to Alberta’s provincial electronic health record (Netcare) and community electronic medical records (EMRs) will strengthen information exchange where Connect Care is not the record of care.

While the intent is clinical improvement, reduction in the number and diversity of health information systems will also limit information technology expenditures.

• Vlog: What is Connect Care?
• Vlog: Why does Connect Care matter?

Connecting for Continuity

Continuity of Care is about a patient and provider healthcare experience that is coherent, connected, coordinated and consistent with patient goals.

Connect Care will go a long way towards bringing continuity to healthcare in Alberta. Its integrated clinical information system (CIS) will replace most of the >1,300 health information systems currently in place across Alberta Health Services (AHS) and affiliated organizations. When fully implemented in late 2022, the CIS will be used by all providers where AHS is accountable for the record of care.

A variety of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) facilitate primary and specialty healthcare where Connect Care is not the record of care. Without ways to bridge these information spaces (CIS and EMR), continuity is broken.

One bridge is provided by Alberta's provincial Electronic Health Record, Netcare, which aggregates key health information and makes it available to authorized providers. Netcare is improved when Connect Care deploys because it gains a wider range of information from a single, standards-based, CIS source.

Another bridge is provided through "eDelivery" of health information from Connect Care and Netcare to Alberta EMRs. This too is improved with Connect Care. More information in a more consistent format is easier for EMRs to capture and organize.

Two new initiatives promise even better connections. AHS, the Alberta Medical Association and Alberta Health are promoting two-way health information sharing between EMRs and Netcare through "Community Information Integration" (CII) and a "Central Patient Attachment Registry" (CPAR). These allow patients to be linked to a medical home, and for that home to share information with Netcare. The CII will extend sharing to include the CIS in 2020 and CPAR will both inform and be informed by what happens where Connect Care is the record of care.

Working together, Alberta's CIS, EHR, EMR, CII and CPAR help to defragment the health information space; bringing continuity to Albertans' experience of healthcare.

• FAQ: Connect Care outside Connect Care