Novari chosen for MSK surgical referral pathway

THUNDER BAY and KINGSTON, Ont. – Novari Health’s access to care management and central intake technology has been selected and is being implemented as the enabling technology to support Ontario’s Intake & Coordinated Access Model for hip & knee referrals (MSK) in the north west of the province.

The Regional Orthopedics Program, affiliated with Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (TBRHSC), is an Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) Musculoskeletal Centre of Excellence beta site, serving the geographic region of the North West Local Health Integration Network (NWLHIN).

The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) recognizes existing intake and coordinated assessment models that serve patients with musculoskeletal (MSK) related conditions have significantly benefited these patients, as well as positively impacted surgical wait times.

The Ministry has mandated the expansion of such models beginning in 2017/18, working with all Local Health Integration Networks to coordinate implementation locally. The Novari Health Access to Care Software Platform is widely used across the province and has processed tens of thousands of “centralized intake” referrals.

According to the company, Novari is the only system available that can manage wait times related to all components of a referral pathway – for example, from Physician to Specialist (Wait 1), Specialist to surgery (Wait 2), and post-surgery to rehabilitation services (Wait 3).

The Novari Access to Care platform’s Novari ATC module was successfully deployed across the NWLHIN in 2017, as the regional surgical eBooking and wait list management solution.

With the selection and current implementation of the Novari eRequest module, MSK referrals will be processed electronically at the Regional Orthopedics Program’s central intake office in Thunder Bay and then electronically routed, using the Novari platform, to one of four or more MSK assessment centres throughout the region.

At the assessment centres, patients will be clinically evaluated by an advanced practice physiotherapist or another skilled practitioner, and if qualified for surgery, will then be forwarded, using Novari technology, to individual orthopedic surgeons for a surgical consult.

In the North West LHIN region, patients proceeding to surgery will electronically transition from “Wait 1” (the initial wait time associated with a referral) to “Wait 2” (the wait time associated with the wait for the surgical procedure).

This seamless ability to electronically manage both Wait 1 and Wait 2 is unique to Novari Health and provides surgeons, hospitals, and most importantly patients with an integrated end-to-end solution to manage the continuum of care.

For security, scalability and ease of implementation, the cloud-based Novari Access to Care software platform is being provided as software as a service, hosted on Microsoft’s Canadian Azure cloud infrastructure.

Pictured above, left to right: Dr. David Puskas, Orthopaedic Surgeon and Medical Director of Musculoskeletal Health at TBRHSC; Caroline Fanti, Program Director, Regional Orthopaedic Program, TBRHSC; Dr. Claude Cullinan, Orthopaedic Surgeon, Program Director for Surgical Foundations, Northern Ontario School of Medicine; Dr. Kurt Droll, Orthopaedic Surgeon and Program Director of Orthopaedic Surgery for the Northern Ontario School of Medicine; Karen Murphy, Advanced Practice Physiotherapist.

About Novari Health

Based in Kingston, Ont., Novari has offices in Vancouver, Boston and Sydney, Australia. Novari focuses exclusively on designing, building and implementing healthcare software solutions that improve access to care for patients and the efficiency of the healthcare system. For more information, please contact John Sinclair, President, at jsinclair@novarihealth.com or visit www.novarihealth.com.