HHS celebrates Digital Health Week with a gold star win from Epic

The Hamilton Health Sciences health information technology services ambulatory team holding the award for Epic Gold Stars 9. Our hospital system is only one of two in Canada to achieve this designation.

A modern health care system is one that is connected, equitable and accessible. A patient’s care journey may include check-ins with a family doctor, visits with specialists in the hospitals, trips to the emergency department, and more. As patients move through these care settings, digital health systems need to interact with each other so that their information moves with them through the system and care teams can have better access to their complete health care history.

Our hospital information system, Epic, allows for this type of digitally-connected care for patient records, enabling information to flow seamlessly between different solutions and devices so that delays and duplications can be avoided.

“We are proud of our exceptional use and integration of the Epic digital health record system which has led to safer, more efficient patient care.”

Epic has also allowed us to move to a new medication administration system to reduce medication errors. At the bedside, staff can scan both the medication and an armband on the patient’s wrist to validate the dose against their prescription, creating a fully closed-loop medicine administration system.

Epic also allows our clinical teams to spend less time on charts and more time with patients. With a single click, nurses can use Epic to automatically populate values that are usually the same between patients, such as examination of intravenous tubes, where one click saves six clicks for patients without any concerns. Nurses then go back and make individual changes only where necessary.

MyChart is the patient-facing side of Epic. Whether patients receive care at the hospital often or once in a while, the online interactive MyChart portal helps them keep track of appointments, health-care providers, medications, test results, follow-up instructions and more.

Table of Contents

Top two in Canada for Epic

Now into our third year of using Epic, HHS recently achieved the second highest level (stage 6) of a key scale (HIMSS) which looks at how well electronic health records are integrated at a hospital.

And we have reached Level 9 of Epic’s own Gold Stars validation program – one of only two organizations in Canada to achieve this. Reaching Level 9 means we have adopted at least 85 percent of the Epic Gold Star features.

“We are proud of our exceptional use and integration of the Epic digital health record system which has led to safer, more efficient patient care,” says Michelle Leafloor, VP Health Information Technology Services & Chief Information Officer.

Digital innovation at HHS

By using Voyce translation services to break down language barriers with on-demand video and audio interpretation in over 240 languages to using artificial intelligence (AI) in research and clinical care, HHS is at the forefront of digital innovation.

Another example of our digital leadership is the CARE Data initiative, which helps us better understand the needs of diverse patient populations, identify inequities and improve care. It’s a key feature of our commitment to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) across the organization.

The use of AI technology has also had an impact at HHS. The Nuance DAX Copilot is an AI tool that “listens” to medical visits between a patient and a physician, and produces a detailed medical note, ready for review and quick editing by the physician. The technology is integrated with Epic, allowing visit notes to be entered into the patient’s health record in a confidential manner, and improving the patient experience with more face-to-face interactions with clinicians.

During Digital Health Week, we celebrate all these achievements and recognize the advancements of digital capabilities at HHS and how they make the care we provide safer and more efficient. November 14 to 28 is Digital Health Week in Canada.

link