BY NORM TOLLINSKY
North Bay family physician Dr. Wendy Graham has launched a personal health record application that will allow patients to share information about their medications, allergies and chronic diseases with health-care providers and family members.
A web-based application, MiHealth is being marketed across the country by Merck Canada and runs on smartphones, tablets and computers.
Family physicians sign up for the service for free and download the MiHealth office application. At a patient’s request, the family physician creates an account for an interested patient, who then completes the registration process online at home, paying an annual fee of $59 or $224 for a family of four.
Once enrolled, patients enter their information in MiHealth and have it validated by their family physician who receives a small fee from MiHealth Global Systems for doing so.
MiHealth also enables secure two-way encypted communication between patient and doctor, allowing physician staff to communicate test results, publicize flu shot clinics and respond to patient inquiries and messages.
Emails
Family physicians may be a bit tentative about the whole notion of two-way email communication with patients, but secure electronic messaging, Graham insists, will enhance practice efficiency.
“They’ll begin to see the advantage of not leaving their patients on hold, allowing them to get through on busy phone lines and allowing information that’s critical to get through to patients in a secure manner,” she said.
Physicians shouldn’t be concerned about being spammed by their patients.
“The evidence doesn’t support that,” said Graham. “A Kaiser Permanente study involving more than 35,000 patients over a two-month period showed that most patient emails are very short and to the point, addressing clinical administrative issues such as making or changing an appointment or asking about a CAT scan.”
Electronic messaging is pervasive today, but in medicine we’re still playing telephone tag, complained Graham. “You can’t leave a message on the phone for a patient because of privacy, so all we can say is ‘please call the office.’”
When patients do call back, chances are they’ll get a busy signal, so it’s frustrating and stressful for all concerned. Secure messaging through MiHealth is a much more efficient means of communication, she maintains.
Graham doesn’t see electronic messaging being used for anything other than clinical administrative purposes.
“If a patient emails you to say he doesn’t feel well, you tell him to come to the office. We’re not practicing medicine with this system. It’s really important that this is clearly articulated.”
Being able to provide a list of medications, allergies and other personal health information to specialists and emergency room physicians will ensure speedier service and better outcomes, said Graham.
Emergencies
“Now, when you go to the ER, I pull everything out of your wallet and I ask your friend if you have any allergies. MiHealth is a much more effective tool for emergencies or assisting CCAC staff in sorting out what’s going on with a patient.”
Family physicians are expected to validate the data in the personal health record annually, but changes in medication may require more frequent updates. In these situations, it’s up to the physician and patient to negotiate a fee for the validation.
MiHealth has been mapped to Ontario MD standards and is currently compatible with two EMR systems. This allows physicians to import data from an EMR into MiHealth and vice versa, “but I must emphasize that it’s not my intention for MiHealth to be an EMR. It just facilitates copying the patient’s summary information very quickly.”
Future enhancements to MiHealth include patient access to lab results and integrations with additional EMRs and Bluetooth-enabled medical devices.
Graham, a member of the Blue Sky Family Health Team, got the idea at a conference in Washington, D.C., where she learned about an application developed to help U.S. wounded warriors keep in touch with their case managers. The application was adapted for a family medicine practice and trialed by 100 patients prior to MiHealth’s launch in November.
www.mihealth.com
