Integrated plans of care help to coordinate care by ensuring the entire interdisciplinary team understands specific problems or clinical conditions pertaining to the patient.
“The new clinical information system will automatically suggest screening questions to ask the patient on admission and a plan of care may be suggested following this action. The care team can then choose to implement the plan of care and customize it if necessary,” explains Rosa Hart, Director, Clinical Informatics, VCH.
“At the moment, we do not have an automated process for plans of care and this move to an electronic model will help increase efficiency and consistency, and subsequently provide safer patient care."
“We choose the plans of care by assessing them against set criteria, including a quality rating, alignment with best practice and adherence to Ministry of Health requirements. The degree of overlap between VCH, PHSA and PHC is also a major consideration.”
Christine Jerrett, Director, Clinical Informatics, CST, says the biggest challenge now is transitioning to a new way of thinking.
“We need to work out how to do what we currently do in an electronic system, including how to best utilize the new functionality at our disposal.”
