Eastern Ontario hospitals up-and-running on Epic system

Three Eastern Ontario community hospitals went live with the Epic health information system in November, joining the Atlas Alliance, a group of healthcare organizations all using Epic.

The Kemptville District Hospital (KDH), the Winchester District Memorial Hospital and the Deep River & District Hospital join six other healthcare organizations, including The Ottawa Hospital, in a common, region-wide health information system that allows patient information to be shared to all Alliance members.

It’s designed to improve the continuity of care and the patient experience when accessing care at different facilities in the region.

The original six Atlas Alliance members, including the Ottawa Hospital Academic Family Health Team, Hawkesbury District General Hospital, Renfrew Victoria Hospital, St. Francis Memorial Hospital in Barry’s Bay and the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, went live with Epic in 2019. All Alliance partners make use of The Ottawa Hospital’s data centre.

“In the past, if we were transferring a patient from our facility to Ottawa, for example, we would literally have to photocopy all of the paper chart, all of the labs and X-ray reports, download a copy of the X-ray onto a CD, put all of it in an envelope and send it off with the patient via EMS,” said KDH clinical project lead Cathy Burke.

“If the receiving physicians had any questions or wanted any other information, they’d have to call our ED, get a hold of the ED doc and have a conversation. That’s how it was done in the past. Now that we are part of the Atlas Alliance, the receiving hospital can see everything through Epic.”

Located in Kemptville, 55 kilometres south of Ottawa, KDH serves a catchment area with a population of 85,000. It has 40 beds, a wide array of outpatient services and an emergency department with approximately 22,000 patient visits per year.

Prior to the adoption of Epic, KDH relied on an assortment of electronic and paper systems, including an Anzer EHR that “was primarily used in patient registration and wasn’t used in the clinical areas as much as Epic,” said Brittany Rivard, KDH CFO and vice-president operations.

“With Epic, patients are entered into the system right from the time they walk in the door and the information flows freely through every department they go to as well as to the other hospitals.”

Patient registration data from January 1, 2019 was transferred to Epic, but the prevalence of paper charting in the past limited the migration of historical data.

KDH CEO Frank Vassallo noted that it’s relatively uncommon for small community hospitals like KDH to adopt an Epic EMR but predicts the trend will continue now that there is a critical mass of 43 hospitals in Ontario on Epic.

“The biggest challenge is that it’s unaffordable to do it on your own,” he said. “By piggybacking on The Ottawa Hospital and the Atlas Alliance, the costs are shared across all of the regional partners.”

Indeed, the opportunity to avoid a huge cash outlay for a dedicated deployment persuaded the Group Health Centre, a primary care organization serving 70,000 rostered patients in Sault Ste. Marie, 800 kilometres away in Northern Ontario, to join the Atlas Alliance last April.

Ottawa-based information technology provider Nova Networks worked closely with KDH on the transition to Epic.

“We have a very small internal IT team and an aging infrastructure, most of which needed updating from a hardware perspective in order to support Epic, and Nova Networks put those things in place,” said Rivard. “The transition was remarkably seamless. We were able to leverage the rich experience of the six original members of the Alliance and had tons of support in place from Nova Networks, Deloitte and The Ottawa Hospital.”

Established in 1993, Nova Networks provides a range of IT managed services to the healthcare sector through offices in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Ogdensburg, New York.

Gus Isaac, president and CEO of Nova Networks, attributes the company’s success to the emphasis it places on speaking the same language as its clients and understanding their needs.

Particularly helpful in this most recent transition to Epic by KDH, Deep River and Winchester was the lead role played by Nova Networks VP Tyson Roffey, who as a former VP and CIO of both the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario and Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, drove their shared adoption of Epic.

The Epic EMR offers KDH a wide range of benefits over and above streamlined collaboration with external partners. Its My Chart portal, for example, allows patients to access, print and download diagnostic test results and physician notes. They can also see their upcoming appointments, as well as lists of allergies and medications.

Epic also improves patient safety by documenting procedures to ensure the accurate dispensing of medication. In the future, said Burke, KDH can also take advantage of Epic Care Link, a web-based portal offering primary care doctors access to their patients’ hospital records.

The adoption of Epic is a “game changer” for KDH, said CEO Vassallo. “This investment in infrastructure will enable more effective collaboration internally and gives us the tools and processes to deliver excellent patient care.”