Minister says Ontario plans to create connected primary care medical records system

Ontario is planning to create a provincewide electronic medical records system for primary care, more than two decades after the government first launched the scandal-plagued eHealth project.

Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced Thursday that the province is starting by talking to potential vendors to see what’s possible.

“[It’s asking]do you have the capacity to make this work? Show us what it would look like, and when we have multiple systems, how they talk together, whether that’s again in hospitals, in laboratories, in physicians’ offices,” she said.

Dr. Jane Philpott, chair of Ontario’s Primary Care Action Team and a family physician by training, said it would be beneficial to both patients and primary care providers.

“For example, if a patient arrives at the emergency department and their medical history is not readily available, this can create real challenges,” she said.

“Patients want and deserve to have a comprehensive view of their health information, everyone in their care, their allergies, their medications, their vaccinations, test results, no matter where they are done. When that information is missing, it can not only lead to safety risks, but it can also lead to unnecessary retests and delays in care.”

Most primary care providers already use electronic records, Jones said, but their systems are disparate.

“What we need to do next is expand it so that lab results can come in, so that they can have hospital visits, so that Ontario Health at Home and interactions with home care workers can all become part of that record, because, frankly, that’s the whole person,” she said.

Officials do not provide any cost estimate of the system

Government officials would not say what the cost estimate is before the market exercise.

Ontario began trying to create unified electronic medical records for patients in the early 2000s, but in 2009 the then-Liberal health minister was forced to resign after the Auditor General said the eHealth agency had spent $1 billion but had little to show. A follow-up report by the Auditor General in 2016 stated that $8 billion had been spent up to that time on various electronic health records initiatives.

Opposition health critics said creating unified, electronic medical health records is a laudable goal, but they are skeptical of its implementation under the government of Premier Doug Ford.

In particular, they pointed to the security and privacy of patient data as major concerns, especially given the privacy breach related to home care patients’ data last year.

Liberal health critic Adil Shamji said, “As I heard the announcement today, it’s clear they have no timeline for implementing this… and they’re being blindsided by their lack of learning from past lessons, as we’ve seen with Ontario Health at Home.”

“It is inevitable that it will either not be followed at all, or will be done so with a sub-optimal product that will only jeopardize patient care.”

NDP health critic says rollout needs to be ‘seamless’

NDP critic Robin Lennox, a family physician, said the idea is great in principle.

He said, “I think there will be a lot of apprehension about this change until we can make sure that the implementation will be as seamless as possible, and that we will actually see a reduction in the administrative burden for our doctors.”

“If we can do that, I think we’ll have a positive reception.”

Government officials said that when the new system is implemented, participation will be voluntary for both health professionals and patients. They are considering supporting doctors with the cost of the change to the new records.

Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy also announced Thursday that next week’s provincial budget will include an additional $325 million for primary care, as Jones said the government is still on track toward its goal of connecting everyone in the province to a primary care provider by 2029.