Selecting your EMR
Your EMR vendor should…
Be established, well-funded and committed to a long-term strategy for eHealth solution development. Avoid ‘one-off’ product-sellers and look for a well-rounded systems integrator that can look beyond the EMR to your practice and the healthcare system as a whole.
Understand your jurisdiction’s entire eHealth strategy — once again having the expertise and knowledge that extends beyond EMR implementation and encompasses the entire healthcare continuum from primary to acute to community-based.
Adhere to industry and medical-community standards — The EMR you’re adopting should comply with current practice standards, reporting guidelines and funding frameworks.
Be a funding-eligible provider that collaborates with industry-recognized organizations — Your EMR should meet provincial funding-eligibility guidelines and your vendor should keep your solution current with policies mandated by organizations such as OntarioMD and Canada Health Infoway.
Have a proven track record implementing stable, robust solutions and delivering results in successful deployments from small, rural clinic installations to large-scale provincial EHR systems.
Your EMR software should…
Comply with current healthcare standards — The software should be certified to OntarioMD specifications, be built around the Canada Health Infoway blueprint, and should meet standards such as HL7, ICD-9 and CCHIT.
Support effective chronic disease management and preventive care — The software should be protocol-driven to ensure accurate, streamlined documentation and reporting around CDM and preventive care.
Be accessible anytime, anywhere, with robust remote-access security and proven, strict adherence to Canadian and Ontario privacy legislation.
Run in secure, redundant data centres that ensures built-in failover and back-up.
Integrate with other healthcare systems such as Ontario labs, hospital information systems (HIS) and diagnostic imaging systems.
Be database-driven, with all clinical data stored in discrete fields so providers can mine data to better manage their patient populations.
Enable multiple modes of data entry including computer, laptop, pen-based device, thin client, tablet, and voice recognition.
Protect physicians with an end-user agreement that guarantees physician ownership and custodianship of all data.