Case Studies
Electronic Technology Catching On with Patients
The Murakami Medical Clinic in Hope takes full advantage of the Private Physician Network
October 2009
Dr. Joshua Greggain is a family physician at the Murakami Medical Clinic in Hope. Along with four other General Practitioners at the clinic, he has been using an EMR for four years and the Private Physician Network (PPN) since March 2009. The physicians in Hope are able to use their remote access tokens at Fraser Canyon hospital to access the EMR for their patients when doing rounds/ER shifts at the hospital. The clinic employs five MOAs and has five examination rooms, one procedure room and a small lab.
Making the move
The patients at the Murakami clinic were used to seeing piles of paper around the reception area. Gradually, the shelves with hundreds of files were replaced by modern SunRay computers, thin terminals that allow physicians to use key cards instead of typing the usual log in information.
“Our patients were very curious to find out what happened with all that paper,” Jo-Anne Hislop, the clinic’s office manager, said. The patients in Hope came to appreciate the improved care system and noticed that the EMR saves a lot of time. The office staff can easily access the information through the EMR when dealing with telephone calls and scheduling appointments.
“There have never been any privacy concerns,” Jo-Anne said.
The move from paper to electronic hasn’t been easy, she added. “The full transition took us almost four years because, at the time we started, we had physicians of every age and not all of them were keen to use an EMR. We had to scan every document and introduce it into the system and then shred the papers. It took us nine months to switch to computerized charts but everything is going smoothly now.”
Working with an EMR
The physicians and MOAs were trained by the vendor on how to use an EMR. “We have bought a service package with a number of hours of training from the vendor and we still have some hours left for new physicians coming in,” Dr. Joshua Greggain said.
For Dr. Greggain, greater efficiency is one of the biggest benefits of the EMR: “I have all the patient information in one spot now... I don’t have to fill in the forms by hand anymore and I can finish everything in a matter of minutes instead of hours. I would never go back to paper charts.” Dr. Greggain would like to see a better connection between hospital and clinics. “I have all the consultation notes in my office but in the hospital I don’t have anything unless I log into my system. We still receive all the data on paper from the hospital and the information has to be entered manually by the staff,” he said.
What is PPN?
The Murakami Medical Clinic went live on PPN2 in March 2009.
Physicians use the PPN to access clinical information in their PITO-qualified EMR systems either from their practices or from home computers, over a strongly encrypted virtual private network (VPN).
All traffic passing through the secure core is scanned by devices to protect the traffic from viruses and other threats.
The network is built and maintained by Telus and there are no monthly costs for clinics because the network is funded by the Ministry of Health Services in support of the PITO program.
“We have never had speed-related or any other problems when we use it in the office. Sometimes, the remote access is challenging but when that happens, we call Telus or the vendor and they solve the problem,” Dr. Greggain said.
- the number of staff members accessing the EMR application at the same time
- other non-EMR applications the clinic accesses over the Internet
- whether the clinic accesses images online on the Health Authorities web sites or downloads the images to other non-EMR applications
Each clinic’s PPN circuit is sized based on:
A PPN 1 service is an Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Loop (ADSL) service that can accommodate up to 14 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) hosts and 14 static hosts at the site. A PPN 2 service consists of two PPN1s for greater overall bandwidth, and a larger number of hosts available at the site. The PPN1 and PPN 2 delivers download speeds to 4 Mbps and upload speeds to 1 Mbps. PPN 3 delivers symmetrical upload and download speeds of 10 Mbps while PPN4 delivers symmetrical up and download speeds of 100 Mbps.
For general information about the PPN, visit http://www.pito.bc.ca/benefits/ppn.php
