New health care technology expected to help facilities to operate more efficiently

One Person One Record is expected to start rolling out to Nova Scotia Health and IWK facilities in 2025

CITYnews halifax\ Meghan Groff

Listen to this article

The Nova Scotia government plans to replace what it calls aging and obsolete technology with a new digital medical record program.

It says One Person One Record (OPOR) will replace or connect more than 80 existing health care systems that are currently used every day to record and view patient information.

“Many of these systems are outdated, slow, and information cannot be shared easily between them, frustrating healthcare professionals who, on average, log in to at least five systems to gain a full picture of a patient’s health information,” explained the Department of Health and Wellness in a news release.

The department’s minister Michelle Thompson said this will help our hospitals operate more efficiently.

“For years, doctors and nurses and allied health care professionals have been telling government that the current models for collecting, recording and sharing information are robbing them of valuable time they could be spending with their patients,” she stated.

“And for years, patients have complained that they’ve had to go over their medical history and their list of medications with multiple care providers on multiple occasions, often in the same hospital on the same day.”

She said the new system will speed up care at emergency departments, cut down on duplicate medical testing and prevent human error.

Our province is one of that last still charting health information on paper, which can be hard to read, and at times can takes weeks for records to be scanned into the existing systems.

With the new technology, staff at any Nova Scotia Health or IWK Health facility will be able to access a patient’s complete and up-to-date information at any time.

“Once we have a fully implemented clinical information system with OPOR, we will expect to realize a 10 per cent drop in the average length of stay for patients, so here in Nova Scotia, that would functionally increase our capacity to 7,000 to 9,000 patients a year,”  the Central Zone’s medical executive director, Dr. Christy Bussey, told reporters Wednesday.

She also expects an increase of more than 500,000 outpatient visits a year.

“And also the potential for patient safety improvements, not just with legibility, but the ability to update clinical standards and roll those out across the province, so that health care providers, at their fingertips, have access to this information,” Bussey added.

New features are expected to be added over time, including the ability for patients to access to their own medical records.

The province has inked a $364.5 million 10-year agreement with Oracle Cerner — described as a global leader in integrated health information technology — which will spend the next two years designing and building OPOR, then will be tasked with maintaining the system.

According to the province, in 2014 it was estimated the cost for mandatory upgrades and maintenance of the existing systems over a 10-year period was $374 million, a number that would have only grown in the past nine years.

“As a clinician, I do believe we can not afford to not invest in OPOR,” Bussey added.

OPOR is expected to start rolling out to hospitals and mental health and addiction facilities in two years, starting with Dartmouth General, the Cobequid Community Health Centre and the Community Outpatient Centre in Bayers Lake.

It will then be expanded to other locations every three months, first to the IWK, followed by the QEII, then the rural Central Zone, followed by other health care zones in the province.

“On Patient One Record, or OPOR, is one of the most important tools we have for improving patient care and outcomes,” Minister Thompson stated.