Humber River Hospital’s (HRH) Outpatient Oncology Treatment Clinic is the first MEDITECH 6.x client globally to launch, test and adapt their new Oncology Management software. This integrated electronic solution enhances the Clinic’s management of the unique needs of patients with cancer. “This system transformed the Oncology Clinic into a fully digital unit, taking Humber River one step closer to becoming North America’s first fully digital hospital,” says Jane Sanders, HRH Oncology Manager. “It also supports our mission to put patients at the centre of their care while focusing on improving quality of care and patient safety.”
This software is a comprehensive tool that provides clinical staff with centralized status boards and online access to the most common oncology management routines. It helps care providers and patients plan months in advance with an automatic patient calendar function that includes not only appointment information, but treatment information and patient reminders. This gives patients the ability to schedule the support they need to get to appointments and to recover from their treatments.
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Enhanced safety features for medication administration are also embedded into the system for safe chemotherapeutic medication administration and an auto-calculating weight-based dosing capability. By integrating with the hospital’s Bedside Medicine Verification and electronic Medication Administration Record (BMV/eMAR) systems, the risk of medication errors is greatly reduced.
But the most powerful feature of this program is the complete integration with other MEDITECH modules and hospital systems, connecting care teams like never before. Registration, Community Wide Scheduling, Patient Care System (PCS), and Pharmacy are all connected in real time through the patient’s electronic medical record (EMR). By having all orders, tasks and messages digital and accessible all hours of the day, there’s no paper to be lost or misinterpreted. The Oncology Clinic is now virtually paper free from patient registration through to treatment with the elimination of paper patient orders, requisitions and medical files.
The system also helps streamline workflows and processes, helping care providers coordinate patient care across all hospital departments with greater efficiency so that they have more time to spend with patients. When a patient calls the clinic to renew a prescription, or when a doctor or clinician adds an order entry to the patient’s treatments, the entire care team is aware of the updates and can execute treatment orders efficiently and effectively.
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“This system has completely changed the way we work and enhanced the way patients are cared for,” according to Sanders. “We now have more defined processes and leaner workflows, giving us more time to focus on patients and their needs.”
Patients want to have complete information to help them understand their illness and support them with their decisions. That is why this system has links for treatment routines and literature on best practices embedded in the treatment plan as well as links to Cancer Care Ontario’s patient education information. Clinicians will be able to support patients by reviewing this information with them and providing them with material to review with their family, assisting them in navigating through this difficult life challenge.
“Knowing Humber’s plans for technology in their new facility, we were delighted to have them as the first 6.x client to launch this software,” according to Lincoln Brewer, MEDITECH’s Senior Development Analyst of Product Development for Oncology. “Humber River’s scope for this implementation was far-reaching, letting us test the different functionalities. We made a great team working together to develop a product that meets the needs of front line staff and physicians while enhancing patient care.”
The implementation of MEDITECH’s new Oncology Management software is helping Humber River Hospital achieve our vision of reinventing patient care. With this system, HRH becomes a leader in digital integration for oncology management, providing a higher level of patient safety and efficient, quality patient care. Using the capabilities of our new hospital and applying a patient and family-centred focus, Humber River will change how we deliver healthcare and how we work as a team in delivering enhanced high quality, safe, respectful care.
