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Achieving Holistic Healthcare with eHRSS

 
Dr Alex Yu (bring Benefit to Man for the Glory of God)

“Information sharing through the Electronic Health Record Sharing System (eHRSS) can help us provide holistic and quality healthcare services in a more cost-effective way.”

Dr Alex Yu,
Chief Executive Officer,
Hong Kong Baptist Hospital (HKBH)
 

“eHRSS makes healthcare more open and transparent. The immediate benefit is that we can cut down on administrative and paper work in tracing patients’ medical records such as laboratory test results,” said Dr Yu.

“It helps cost control, which is important to private hospitals as costs would have an impact on the affordability of our services.”

“It also spares patients repeated laboratory tests, at the same time enhances healthcare quality as accuracy and reliability of patients’ information are much ensured.”

reduce administrative and paper work in tracing patients' medical records
eHRSS helps reduce administrative and paper work in tracing patients' medical records
 

eHR Sharing and Community Healthcare

There are 12 private hospitals in Hong Kong and they have all registered with eHRSS. Speaking on HKBH’s experience, Dr Yu said the hospital has taken a progressive approach in eHRSS application.

“We can now upload demographic data, laboratory test reports and radiology reports onto the system. Up to September this year, we have recorded an upload volume of about 62 000. Our next target is allergy and adverse drug reaction data,” said Dr Yu.

Patients of HKBH are also positive about the system. According to Dr Yu, about 3 500 of their patients have registered with eHRSS.

As a matter of fact, electronic health record (eHR) sharing is not something new to HKBH. The hospital has participated in a number of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) programmes, such as the General Outpatient Clinic PPP (GOPC PPP), the Haemodialysis PPP (HD PPP) and the Colon Assessment PPP, run by the Hospital Authority (HA). The electronic platform of eHRSS facilitates the transfer of some essential patient data of these PPP programmes between HA and private healthcare providers through an electronic platform.

Up to September 2017, 62 000 records
HKBH has taken a progressive approach in eHRSS application. Up to September 2017, the hospital has already uploaded about 62 000 records to the system
 
“It used to be the Public-Private Interface – Electronic Patient Record sharing platform, and now it is eHRSS. The modules of these eHR sharing platforms are very useful and we have got acquainted with their use,” Dr Yu noted.
 
HKBH is the first private hospital to join the HD PPP, as well as the only private hospital so far that has participated in the GOPC PPP. The services are delivered through the Renal Centre and the Community Clinic of HKBH’s Kai Tak Community Health Centre (KTCHC) respectively.
 
Dr Yu said the PPP programmes, with eHR sharing as an essential element, provide patients the choice to receive quality service from the private sector at lower costs.
 
“This is in line with our mission to provide holistic healthcare to the community. Joining these PPP programmes is not about making money. We want to give back to the community, at the same time contributing our efforts in driving improvements in the community, and eHR sharing has a part to play in this. It facilitates us in providing a spectrum of diversified services to patients in need in the community, not only in physical terms but also other aspects including the patients’ social and psychological needs,” Dr Yu stressed.
 
Apart from establishing KTCHC, HKBH has been actively providing community care services. For example, it launched the Baptist Holistic Home Care Service Centre in collaboration with the Baptist Oi Kwan Social Service, also an eHRSS participating organisation, to provide one-stop service to patients who require professional home care services after hospitalisation.
 
HKBH’s eHR Experience
 
Elaborating on HKBH’s digitisation path, Dr Yu said the hospital has been going fast in this aspect. “We invested a great deal in setting up our hospital management system more than a decade ago. The system we have is well used in the USA, Australia and Mainland China.”
 
“It is now being used by all our resident doctors. The only challenge is with associate doctors, who are from outside and not familiar with our system.”
 
“We are now extracting and converting useful data into PDF files and have them emailed to our associate doctors,” said Dr Yu, adding that they are exploring the possibility of building a portal where associate doctors can directly retrieve data.
 
As for Chinese medicine, which is part of the diversified medical services of HKBH, Dr Yu said that they are planning to acquire a commonly used Chinese medicine clinical management system for use in the hospital’s Chinese Medicine Clinic.
 
He agreed that digitisation could help drive standardisation of names of herbal medicine and other practices in Chinese medicine.
 

Outlook on eHRSS Development

Commenting on the latest development that enables eHRSS access for more healthcare professional groups, Dr Yu said if the access is controlled properly, it would help these professionals deliver care, in particular the medication dispensed during operation.

“We need to gain patients’ trust that their eHRs will not be accessed inappropriately. It has to be done on a need-to-know basis, confining the access to related data only,” he said.

On the future development of eHRSS, Dr Yu welcomed the inclusion of radiological images as sharable data. “Both patients and doctors have long expected that. In fact, we have been getting enquiries from some patients who thought imaging records can already be viewed on eHRSS.”

Dr Yu also suggested the development of more common modules in the longer term for private hospitals to facilitate data sharing in eHRSS. “We now have different systems and are using different modules. We are not at the same pace on data uploading. If we can all use the eHRSS modules, it will save us costs and administrative work, while ensuring eHRSS compatibility,” he remarked.

Enabling eHRSS access for more healthcare professional groups
Enabling eHRSS access for more healthcare professional groups would facilitate them in delivering healthcare
 

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