LHSC hires 90 people as it looks to eliminate paper records
The days of your doctor scratching notes on paper are numbered at LHSC.
The hospital has announced plans to hire nearly 100 people to fully digitize medical records.
The multi-year project will commence in the 2024.
Once implemented, the flow of information within LHSC and its 11 partner healthcare facilities, is expected to improve.
“It speeds up response time. It ensures there are no gaps in information at transitions of care,” said Andrew Mes, a digital health executive at LHSC.
In today’s healthcare system, Mes said gaps can occur because paper cannot travel as fast as electronic records.
“So as patients go from one care provider to another, that is an area of risk, where that information is either lost or wrongly transcribed, we reduce that risk by having everything in a digital format and within one system,” Mes explained.
Andrew Mes is a digital health executive at LHSC. (Sean Irvine/CTV News London)
He says a firewall will back up the new system.
However, Mes would not comment on the cost of the project, other than to say it is in the "multi-millions."
So far, 68 positions to support digitization have been posted, according to Kristin Stillert, the Director of Recruitment at LHSC.
“We’re looking for clinic expertise. Some will be technical to provide support analyst roles and business system analyst-type roles. We are also hiring for project manager roles to help with the different streams of the project.”
While the digitization project will be expensive and time-consuming, Mes argues it is worth it.
He says improved record-keeping is crucial, not only for patient care but also for education and research.
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