THUNDER BAY – Doctors have notoriously bad handwriting.
In the past, when writing out orders, that could lead to confusion on the part of those charged with executing them.
Mistakes were occasionally made.
When it comes to health care, mistakes can be disastrous.
Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre is taking steps to remove the guessing game from doctors’ orders.
On Wednesday hospital chief of staff Gord Porter announced the hospital is digitizing its order sets in six areas – covering three medical conditions and three surgical procedures, including knee and hip replacements.
Heart failure, chronic pulmonary disease and community acquired pneumonia, as well as hip fractures, all common conditions seen in Thunder Bay.
Porter said while it’s a mandate of the province to digitize the above procedures and ultimately 25 others, it was the right thing to do.
“They’re much more user friendly by doing this,” Porter said.
“It’s not only in one place, it’s part of a defined period of time from the patient’s admission to their discharge. The orders are all there reflective of that and they’re all typewritten, so there’s no handwritten orders for these particular episodes of care, which eliminates a lot of errors potentially.”
Porter was unable to say how much the switch will eat into the hospital’s budget, noting they did have to purchase additional information technology equipment.
The hospital will also see savings associated with the move, including the use of less paper and better efficiencies in care.
Keith Taylor, chair of the patient family care advisory council, said having a well-thought out and accessible treatment plan is one of the most important details for anyone being admitted to the hospital.
This will help that process, he said.
“When it’s electronic there’s no way to misinterpret any of those instructions. Science says when you have this certain ailment, this is what you need to do. And it’s proven that’s the best practice for that particular illness and that’s tied in with the electronic order set,” Taylor said.
“What we’re doing is we’re improving the road map of your stay here.”
Porter said the hospital will iron out any wrinkles in the system in its initial stages and roll it out to more areas in the future.
