Ontario eHub connects additional facilities

KITCHENER-WATERLOO, Ont. – Ontario eHub, a partnership between TransForm and Project AMPLIFI, reached another significant milestone in the pursuit of coordinated patient care in the Kitchener-Waterloo region. As of October 19, 2023, Grand River Hospital and St Mary’s Hospital have joined the Erie St Clair, London, Cornwall and Grey-Bruce regions in going live on the Ontario eHub, marking a crucial step forward in the seamless sharing of patient data.

These hospitals join 34 other hospitals and 118 long term care homes in the province to date with more to come prior to the end of the year.

The collaborative partnership between TransForm and Project AMPLIFI is realizing a vision that is committed to enhancing the continuity of care for Long-Term Care (LTC) residents, streamlining transitions between care institutions. This achievement is poised to lead to safer care for Ontarians and more efficient workflows for healthcare providers.

The new hospitals connected to eHub will now have the following benefits:

• Immediate access to latest patient health records from previous health settings.
• Saved time and resources, eliminating the need for faxing and phoning previous health providers.
• Quick and easy reconciliation of allergies, medications, problem lists, and immunizations into the patient’s hospital chart.
• Increased patient safety by reducing transcription and medical errors during care transitions.
• Digital documentation of the patient’s hospital visit, immediately available to other connected healthcare facilities upon discharge, including encounter details, discharge instructions, key lab and procedure results, recent vital signs, and symptoms.

The hospitals connected to Ontario eHub in the go-live are Grand River Hospital’s Freeport Campus and Kitchener-Waterloo Campus, as well as St. Mary’s General Hospital.

Wendy Wilson (pictured), TransForm project manager and provincial implementation lead, shared her thoughts on this achievement, stating, “TransForm has been working with Grand River and St Mary’s Hospitals to connect to the Ontario eHub, facilitating the viewing of patient data between the hospitals and LTCs in their areas. This go-live brings the total number of hospital sites connected to Long-Term Care homes via Ontario eHub to 37 and marks the connection of another 26 new Long-Term Care homes in the region.”

TransForm spearheads the project management oversight for all Ontario eHub connection projects for the 63 hospitals utilizing the Oracle Health Information System (HIS), as part of Project AMPLIFI for Oracle Health hospitals.

The Ontario eHub Health Information Exchange (HIE) is funded by the Ministry of Health through Project AMPLIFI. As part of Project AMPLIFI, the Ontario eHub Health Information Exchange implementation will also support clinical information exchange between Oracle hospitals.

About TransForm SSO
TransForm Shared Service Organization is a not-for-profit, shared service organization founded by the five hospitals in Erie St. Clair to manage their hospital IT and supply chain needs. As a leader in health system innovation, TransForm SSO has developed and implemented advanced initiatives that improve efficiency and help customers focus on providing outstanding care and service. Our goal is to provide exceptional customer service, find new opportunities to reduce costs, increase efficiencies while improving the performance of healthcare organizations and helping our member hospitals. Our award-winning team is well-equipped to help the health system thrive. To learn more about TransForm SSO, please visit www.transformsso.ca or follow us on LinkedIn: TransForm Shared Service Organization and Twitter: @TransFormSSO.

About Project AMPLIFI
St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton is the delivery partner leading Project AMPLIFI over a three-year period and is supporting sites across Ontario to implement a bi-directional data exchange between Long-Term Care homes and hospitals. Project AMPLIFI enabled the implementation of the Ontario eHub to exchange patient health data with Long-Term Care Homes in our region.