Some new technology being tested at Rockyview General Hospital in Calgary could prove to significantly cut down on emergency room wait times.
Smart cards are now being used by doctors to allow them to quickly and easily retrieve patient information such as history, perscription information, and test results.
Previously, doctors were required to log in and out of multiple systems and terminals to get at this vital information.
The smart cards come as part of an initiative to improve access and reduce wait times in hospitals.
The 5-Year Health Action Plan was jointly developed by Alberta Health Services and the Government of Alberta, supported by provincial funding.
Since being introduced in April, doctors at Rockyview have seen a time savings of about one hour per shift.
"That means a total of seven extra hours can be spent actually seeing patients per shift; that's the equivalent of adding a full-time emergency physician on shift every day," says Dr. Tom Rich, an emergency physician at Rockyview.
"This technology frees up physicians to do what they are trained to do – look after patients as they arrive to the emergency department. This should have a significant impact on patient wait times."
The smart cards will also make great strides towards security and privacy of patient information.
Doctors still need to use secure logins for a smart card workstation, but when the card it taken out, the session becomes suspended and the screen clears itself of confidential information.
This pilot project will now be rolled out to other sites, beginning with the Alberta Children's Hospital, to see if this savings can be duplicated.
It will take several years for the system to be completely switched over, and once that's done, there will be a provincewide system in place for patient records.
Wait times in Alberta hospitals are somewhere in the range of nine hours and the best way health care professionals had to reducing those times was moving people out of the ER and into hospital beds, if that's what they need.
