Stop repeating yourself!

NEWS RELEASE

NORTH EAST LOCAL HEALTH INTEGRATION NETWORK

************************* Doorways swing open

Pilot project goes live and strengthens connections between providers and patients

The North East LHIN, in partnership with eHealth Ontario, Community Care Information (CCIM), the Sault Area Hospital and three LHINs - Champlain, North Simcoe Muskoka, and North West - have launched a new health service provider portal called Doorways - an Integrated Assessment Record (IAR). The portal allows health-care providers to access information from any location electronically, strengthening the connection between providers and consumers by eliminating the need for consumers to repeat their “story” more than once to more than one provider.

Doorways provides a secure, single point of entry for clinical and assessment information of health-care consumers.

It is being piloted for mental health and addiction providers as well as community service agencies and their consumers. Doorways went live for providers in North Simcoe Muskoka and Champlain LHINs on November 22.

For providers in the NE and NW LHIN, portal access began yesterday.

Portals are a key element of eHealth Ontario’s strategy to make electronic health records available to Ontarians by 2015.

The portal will be operational through to the end of March 2011.

Organizations participating in the NE LHIN include: - Sault Area Hospital - North Shore Community Support Services - Hôpital régional de Sudbury Regional Hospital

- Counselling Centre of East Algoma

- CMHA: Sault Ste. Marie

- Board of Health for Algoma Health Unit.

“Patients will benefit directly from this secure online access to data,” said Louise Paquette, CEO of the NE LHIN. “The portal will allow for more sharing of information between providers, resulting in quality care.” Within the NE LHIN, health service providers were selected based on readiness, interest and patient flow. Participating organizations were clustered geographically to address the likelihood of a patient that moves between various providers, with at least one hospital and one community mental health organization from each LHIN required to participate. PHOTO CAPTION: Health Service Providers embraced the NE LHIN launch of the Doorways Portal. Left to right: Letty Dagoy- Desbiens with North Shore Community Support Services, Brenda Frattini with Counselling Centre of East Algoma, and Anke Lansky-Johnson with North Shore Community Support Services.

*************************