Continuing care IT

Brant’s new system automates rehab reporting

BRANTFORD, Ont. – Brant Community Healthcare System (BCHS), a regional health centre providing primary care, emergency and specialized services, has purchased Clarity Healthcare Solution for NRRS, which will enable the hospital to collect valuable health information electronically and more efficiently assess healthcare metrics, such as patient wait times for rehabilitation services.

The Clarity Healthcare Solution – from Consulting Cadre International Inc. (CCI), one of Canada’s leading healthcare solution providers – will enable Brant Community Healthcare to replace its current paper-based process with an electronic program. The application is being installed this month and will be able to generate full reports by early May, the company said.

BCHS is required to collect and submit information quarterly to the Canadian Institute for Health Information’s (CIHI) National Rehabilitative Reporting System (NRS), which generates a report several months later.

Current data is retrospective. The Clarity Healthcare Solution enables BCHS to perform real-time data entry and retrieval, thereby allowing more timely internal analysis. Better access to relevant data can support rehabilitation service planning.

The data submitted includes general, non-patient-specific information, including demographic (sex, date of birth, vocational status), administrative (wait times for admission and discharge), health characteristic (diagnoses) and clinical assessment statistics. Currently, 95 inpatient rehabilitation facilities in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia submit data to CIHI.

“The Consulting Cadre solution will enable our Rehabilitation team to collect and enter information electronically, thereby streamlining the process and improving efficiency,” explained Lee Pastuck, Manager of In-patient Rehabilitation, Brant Community Healthcare System. “We selected CCI’s Clarity Healthcare Solution for the functionality and ease of use for the front end user. This will lend itself to a smooth transition from paper-based to electronic data entry. The program also offers flexibility to generate both standard and custom reports.”

“We also selected the Clarity Healthcare Solution because it is an industry-standard solution that poses no additional challenges to our existing Information Technology infrastructure,” added Alisdair Miller, Director of Information Technology, Brant Community Healthcare System. “It has a familiar graphical user interface, is easy for our staff to learn how to use and can be integrated with other patient data collection and reporting solutions we may deploy in the future.”

“We are very proud to be associated with Brant Community Healthcare System and very pleased to be working with them to establish an improved health information reporting environment for CIHI and internal purposes,” said Saverio Rinaldi, President, Consulting Cadre International Inc. “We are constantly testing and improving our Clarity Healthcare solution, evolving this product and ensuring we provide healthcare institutions like BCHS with the most accurate and intuitive solution in the marketplace today.”

About Brant Community Healthcare System
In 1999, as part of the ongoing efforts in healthcare restructuring, The Willett Hospital in Paris and the Brantford General Hospital in Brantford became the first two partners in the Brant Community Healthcare System (BCHS), a community-wide, regional health centre providing primary care, emergency and specialized services. The Brantford General Hospital, a 300+ bed, acute care facility, boasts stable, state-of-the-art programs within a team environment that ensures high level patient-focused care. The Willett, a multi- service health centre providing urgent care, primary and community outreach programs, has been meeting the healthcare needs of the residents of Paris and surrounding rural areas since 1922. For further information, please visit their web site at www.bchsys.org.

About Clarity Healthcare Solution for NRRS
Clarity Healthcare Solution for NRRS is a fast and accurate resident assessment solution for rehabilitation care providers. With an intuitive user-friendly interface and data entry validation built in, Clarity Healthcare Solution provides a powerful, integrated and web-based solution for the capture and transmission of assessment data for CIHI reporting of the FIM Instrument to NRS. It seamlessly interfaces with existing systems and makes clinically relevant information easily accessible to multidisciplinary care teams in multi-site organizations.

About Clarity Healthcare Solutions
The first such product to meet Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI) standards in 2002 and again in 2008, Clarity Healthcare Solutions streamlines resident assessments and reporting for complex continuing and long-term care providers. “Patient Assessments Made Easy” for Mental Health, Rehab, Long-term and Continuing Care Reporting and Homecare assessments are available. With an intuitive user-friendly interface and data entry validation built in, the Clarity Healthcare Framework provides a powerful, integrated web-based solution that is easy to learn and saves time across the complete continuum of care. For further information, visit www.clarityhealthcare.net.

About Consulting Cadre International Inc.
Established in Toronto in 1991, Consulting Cadre Inc. is a leading technology service and solutions firm, The company provides consulting, development and implementation services to a wide range of customers within the financial, healthcare and technology markets, For further information, visit www.consultingcadre.net.