Clinical Healthcare Consulting Services Drive Improvements To Patient Care At University Health Netw

By Author: Mckesson
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With the help of the Shared Information Management Services Partnership, the organization deployed an innovative patient Web portal to offer clinical healthcare consulting services across the spectrum of care — enabling patients and their families to navigate the healthcare system more effectively and improve the overall care experience.

Challenge

The Breast Cancer Survivorship (BCS) program at University Health Network's Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, wanted a portal that would provide patients with the opportunity to become more active in their own care.

Patients needed a way to find reliable, relevant information about their condition, says David Wiljer, director of Knowledge Management and Innovation for UHN's Princess Margaret Hospital. Some patients surfing the Web cannot find relevant information. We wanted to provide them with the information they needed, when they needed it.

Answers

Clinicians from UHN's BCS program teamed up with staff from Shared Information Management Services (SIMS), a shared information management and technology service that supports the ...
... IT needs of UHN and eight other healthcare organizations in the Toronto area. Together, the groups sought to identify the special needs of breast cancer survivors, who also piloted the portal.

The patient portal uses McKesson's HorizonWP® Patient Portal application and its existing modules as the underlying technology platform. McKesson's Clinical Professional Services helped define hardware and infrastructure requirements, upgrade existing systems, and install the product.

By using the portal, patients can access:

Personal diary

Care schedules

Community resources

Community events calendar

Personal appointments calendar

Test results with explanation of high/low scores

Personal medication and health profiles that they can create and maintain

A message center with information based on their demographics and health interests

Results

A research study is under way with BCS patients to measure pre- and post-conditions of patients, evaluating the effect of the portal on outcomes and patient satisfaction. To date, results include:

130 breast cancer patients are enrolled and using the portal

Patients spend an average of 30 minutes on the portal per visit and log on five times per month

Significant IT cost savings throughout the partnership by sharing $1.2 million in portal development services

Sometimes patients are reluctant to participate in studies, but we have patients asking us to be a part of this one, says Wiljer. So we expect to quickly meet our goal of 250 patients in the study. When patients gain access to information that is clinically relevant to their condition, they can become active participants in their care.

Discover more about how clinical health care consulting services and the HorizonWP® Patient Portal application from McKesson helped UHN integrate people, processes and technology by downloading this full case study.