The Electronic Home Care Record
An electronic home care record (EHR) is longitudinal record of a client’s medical information and encounters within the home care setting.  To be effective, it is accessible to care providers at the point of care to support informed decision making, care planning and documentation of health outcomes.

There is no doubt that informed decision making leads to improved health outcomes.  Patient safety, reduced visits to the emergency room and improved quality of life are benefits realized through a health-effective care delivery system, enabled by an EHCR.  The government and health policy makers understand that health care is fundamentally information driven, based on their investment in electronic health records (EHR) for acute care, diagnostic imaging and primary care. 

There have been 2 landmark studies in Canada concerning the delivery and integration of home health care. 

In 2005, Elinor Caplan’s landmark report said “Investment in information technology (IT) is a critical enabler for achieving a strong home care system”, Realizing the Potential of HOME CARE, Caplan Report 2005.

In 2008, the Canada Health Infoway funded report developed by Canadian Home Care Association recommended, “Invest in the implementation of an electronic clinical information system for home care that includes all elements of service delivery and is available at the point of care, wherever that service is provided”.  

 What about privacy? 
The Information Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Ann Cavoukian co-authored a paper, Innovative Wireless Home Care Services: Protecting Privacy and Personal Health Information  outlining how to effectively implement mobile ICT into the home care system, which I refer to as “permission to use” the technology for EHCR. 

What can be done to move the EHCR forward?
MedShare would like to help drive the adoption of the Electronic Home Care Record, and has committed to the following actions:

1. Publishing a white paper outlining the need, value and elements of an electronic health care record, suitable for the home care setting.
2. Establishing best practices for EHR adoption, leveraging examples from other jurisdictions and care settings.
3. Document the value to the health care system and benefits to the stakeholders.

MedShare is committed to engaging industry leaders, academic, research and ICT companies to collaborate and develop a framework for implementing an EHCR, by:

1. Develop a how-to guide for implementing an EHCR within a health region.
2. Establish an Authority for reviewing and approving EHCR guidelines and standards.
3. Establishing criteria for certifying EHCR systems.
4. Establish options for financial incentives or reimbursement of costs incurred.

MedShare has begun this process and has a first draft of the Electronic Home Care Record white paper.   Next steps are to establish an interdisciplinary roundtable to determine the key information / data elements of an integrated electronic home care record and to determine what data needs to integrate with other stakeholders in the health care system.

We want to see the Electronic Home Care Record replace the “chart in the home” which is an iunsecure and in-efficient paper-based file. Although MedShare has a vested interest in the EHCR, we recognise this must be a collaborative effort supported by all stakeholders.  To get involved, start by sending me your comments and feedback. 

Barry Billings, President, MedShare
barry.billings@medshare.com

MedShare and Qualicode have teamed up to launch MedShare™ for BlackBerry® for home health care workers in the province of Quebec.  The MedShare application allows nurses, therapist and home care aides to access client demographics, visit schedule, care plans and documentation tools at the point of service, the patient’s home. 

Health care workers using the BlackBerry will receive more accurate and timely information leading to informed care decisions.  The BlackBerry application allows them to complete care documentation in the home, eliminating the dreaded paper-work that accumulates until the end of the day.  MedShare integrates with Qualicode’s scheduling application to deliver the workers schedule on the BlackBerry eliminating multiple phone calls and voice mails that support the current scheduling processes.  The solution automates time sheets submission and the gps capabilities are use to automate travel expense claims. 

Agency managers will appreciate the 40% reduction in administrative time and a 15% reduction in travel expense.  The solution allows Nurses and Therapists to see more clients, while improving the quality of care.  

Read the full press release here.

CARES is done again for another year.  Our fourth event, CARES 2009 celebrated the emergence of MedShare as the standard for mobile health care solutions for home care agencies and workers, and the many thought leaders we had in the room, helping MedShare move the concept of the Electronic Home Care Record forward.

We wanted to thank all of our clients and partners who took the time out of their busy schedule to join us in Milton.  We are happy to be able to provide a valuable event for you to take important time out of your schedule to spend it with us.  We hope you were able to connect with your peers, enjoy some of our presentations, and gain new information to help you in your day job. 

We also wanted to thank the people who worked hard to put the day together.  Wes Pallister, the key organizer of the event, Andrew, Amy, Debbie, Craig, and Barry from the MedShare team for the work they put into their presentations, Tracey, our Nurse and PSW for the presentations, and Susan Gains from Procura.  We also wanted to extend an extra thank you to John McKinley, ADM for informing us of the work that the provincial government is doing in the field of home care and electronic health records.

We are looking forward to an exciting 2010 at MedShare.  Look for new releases of our software, new programs for our customers to provide input, and exciting announcements regarding the Electronic Home Care Record.  We will be attending the 2009 Canadian Home Care Association Summit in Banff, Alberta at the end of October.  Hopefully we will see many of you there.  Please stop by our booth and say hi.
See everyone at CARES 2010 in September.

In order to meet the unique needs of home care nursing teams, we've introduced two new features to our MedShare for BlackBerry solution:

1. Team caseloads.  Nurses can access their entire team's client information, making visit adjustments during the day easy and ensures nurses have all the information they need at their fingertips when they need it.
2. 'My Day' view.  This new view is an alternate to the current calendar view and suitable for viewing daily service plans when assigned visits are not necessarily time-specific.

Both of these new features are provided based on worker profiles making the application easy to customize for the various roles in your organization including personal support workers, therapists, visiting nurses and shift nurses!

We have spent the last year working with our project team to incorporate a large number of items that were logged in Gemini, in support of our next version and release for MedShare HC.  Through late 2008,  up to the beginning of Spring 2009, we have been working hard to ensure that this release includes many new features and improves on current functions, in each of the modules relating to MedShare HC.  Our development and QA effort continued through the summer and while we had hoped for an end of summer release, we decided to include additional features that extended our development. We will formally announce availability for this version at the end of November, 2009.  For the purposes of business planning, a formal upgrade path and planning session will be designed for each customer to allow for impacts and testing requirements defined as a well executed strategy, beginning in Q12010.  Each customer will be notified before the end of the year by the Professional Services team, to  provide information on the effort required for this release to be implemented in a streamlined fashion with minimal risk to your organization.  A migration and upgrade schedule will be planned at that time.

We have made every effort to incorporate your ideas and to review all items requested to improve our product. 

MedShare would like to invite our customers to a ‘THOR Preview’ meeting delivered by web conference, to allow an opportunity to preview the THOR release.

Session 1:
Role & Agency Management & HCW Dashboard
Tuesday November 10th - 10am to 11:30am

Session 2: 
Intake Power Tool, Request Queue & Timesheet Entry
Tuesday November 10th - 2pm to 3:30pm

Session 3:
EHR & Progress Notes, Client Module
Thursday November 12th - 10am to 11:30am

Session 4: 
Finance, Payroll, Billing & Customer Module
Thursday November 12th - 2pm to 3:30pm

Over the last several months, MedShare has been investigating the new requirements for accepting CCAC referrals using HPG and CHRIS.  Many of our customers have been using HPG since early spring 2009.  We have received the complete specifications from the OACCAC and are preparing requirements to implement automatic referral intake into MedShare HC.  We will be reaching out to our MedShare HC customers to provide an action plan to move this project forward.

Please stay tuned!