Physician IT

EMR rating method available to healthcare groups

VANCOUVER – CanadianEMR, a web portal for physicians that evaluates and provides ratings of the major EMR systems used in Canada, is now making its methodology and questionnaire available to healthcare organizations across Canada.

With the input of physicians and vendor advisory groups, CanadianEMR developed a 15 question EMR rating tool that is currently used on the CanadianEMR web site. It allows physicians to rate their EMR according to Purchase Experience, Implementation Experience, Support Experience, Usability and Clinical Satisfaction with the product.

The objective of this tool is to provide a fair and balanced rating of EMR systems use in Canada. To further this aim, Canadian EMR is freely sharing the satisfaction/user rating survey with organizations who are interested in helping refine the tool to build support for its long-term use and recognition as a credible information source for all physicians, industry, the academic community and government.

“My hope is that the tool will provide a baseline rating that can be used widely across Canada and allow for the comparison of satisfaction levels via a single instrument, irrespective of province or jurisdiction,” said Dr. Alan Brookstone (pictured), who heads CanadianEMR and led the development of the EMR ranking project.

“The alternative is multiple satisfaction surveys using different comparison criteria,” continued Dr. Brookstone, “which will further confuse the EMR market and physician purchasers, as they won’t know which data to use.”

The question set was developed over a three-month period and through a number of iterations, with input from: Dr. Brookstone; Dr. Karim Keshavjee (Ontario); Dr. Steve Edworthy , Dr. Norm Yee, Dr. Morgan Price, Dr. James Lai (British Columbia); and Dr. Jean-Francois Rancourt (Quebec). An easy-to-understand ‘five star’ rating system, much like that used by Consumer Reports, will go live on the CanadianEMR site in April 2008.

For more detail, go to www.canadianemr.ca/index.aspx?PID=41

The Survey Tool is now freely available upon request from Dr. Alan Brookstone at: alan.brookstone@canadianemr.ca.