The North West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA) has scored a major win for patients and healthcare staff, earning the President’s Award in the Internal User Experience category for its implementation of a comprehensive Health Information System (HIS).
The project enhances the patient experience across hospitals and health centres by digitising health records and upgrading the entire patient process from registration to discharge.
NWRHA CEO Anthony Blake described it as “a win for patients and the Ministry of Health.”
“In a practical sense, the doctor goes onto the ward, you have to look for that patient’s file, you have to hope that all the information in that file is up to date and current, but if you go onto the ward now and you have a tablet with all that patient’s information, his entire patient history, his blood group, all his past records, all the radiology scans he has done, and not only that, if he’s done a scan in the South West Regional Health Authority, now you have access to that scan at North West, so it’s working.”
On-the-Job Trainees (OJTs) are part of the process, working closely with supervisors at RHAs to digitise the medical records.
Mr. Blake said the system also permits the tracking of expiry dates of pharmaceuticals and prevents ‘double dipping’, reducing wastage in the public health sector.
“So today you went to the clinic in Port of Spain General Hospital, you got a prescription free of charge, then you go to Mt. Hope, to clinic next week, and you got the same prescription again free of charge, but we’ve never had a system that can actually track that unique patient through the system and look at what pharmaceuticals they’ve been utilising. Now what this system is going to do is it’s going to flag you if you’ve actually gotten a prescription in North West and you go and try to get the same thing in another RHA.”
The project is still being rolled out in phases and Mr. Blake noted that it has already seen great success.