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“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.”
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Dr Alex Yu,
Chief Executive Officer,
Hong Kong Baptist Hospital (HKBH)
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“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.”
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eHRSS helps reduce administrative and paper work in
tracing patients' medical records
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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.
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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
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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HKBH’s eHR Experience
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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.”
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“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.”
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“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.
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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.
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He agreed that digitisation could help drive standardisation of names of herbal medicine and other
practices in Chinese medicine.
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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.
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Enabling eHRSS access for more healthcare
professional groups would facilitate them in
delivering healthcare
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