Indeed, Canada’s healthcare system is cutting through the fog of public concern over electronic medical record-sharing. This state of affairs is fraught with dangers to patient care and appropriate data stewardship. A recent letter from the federal health minister, issued in January, directed provinces to integrate non-physician health professionals into public insurance within the coming year. Experts caution that this step could make an already tricky and contentious system even more complicated.
The effort to move to electronic bills started in 2009, but the execution ended up being a headache. Suddenly, thousands of healthcare offices were left in the lurch to navigate this labor-intensive process of transferring existing information from paper records into digital formats. As a result, for years, most practitioners lived in a hybrid world of both paper and electronic records—creating a potential lack of continuity in patient data.
By 2024, a joint national survey by Canada Health Infoway and CMA found that 95 percent of physicians were already using electronic records. That’s an incredible increase from 82 percent in 2017 and only 39 percent back in 2010. While this trend indicates progress, challenges remain.
Abhi Kalra, executive vice-president of Canada Health Infoway, drove home an important message. Tavenner said that hurdles to building a functional health data ecosystem go beyond technical barriers. He highlighted a key obstacle. Harmonizing the greater variety of privacy and data-handling standards across ten provinces represents a serious compatibility barrier to interoperability.
Mark Holland, the former federal liberal health minister under Justin Trudeau, called the current data system “siloed.” He said that the lack of interoperability between different health data systems makes communication and efficiency nearly impossible.
Margot Rejskind’s story serves as a reminder about the very real stakes behind these questions. Following her husband’s death at a PEI hospital, she demanded his entire medical record file. To her shock, the file contained test results that had never been communicated to her, including a critical finding of a KRAS gene mutation.
And when I would call people and say, ‘Listen, I know he’s not supposed to be worse, but he’s worse.’ They totally blew me off, right, at all… . Retrospective Reconstruction Documented Cool House Rejskind remembered.
Dr. Rosemarie Lall own a small medical practice that’s frequently hampered by the lack of quality data exchange. She stated her annoyance at not having detailed patient information when it mattered most. “That lack of information being at your fingertips does the patient a huge disservice,” she added.
Dr. Lall further remarked on the necessity of designing systems with patients’ needs in mind: “You need to build systems with people in mind. I don’t think we’ve done that yet.”
The obstacles are further magnified by the economic realities for physicians. In closing, Joss Reimer drove home the most critical point. Although some provinces provide upfront investments for electronic record systems, the long-term costs are often downloaded to individual physicians.
One issue that struck me was the one emphasized by Dr. Reimer, the difficulty in communication between doctors. This ongoing struggle of efficient communication has been plaguing our healthcare network.
Even with these challenges, many companies are working on new technologies and innovations to help ease patient data sharing. Rishi Nayyar’s creation of PocketHealth offers a cloud-based platform that allows patients to download their medical images or share them with providers. This initiative, Patients as a Catalyst to Interoperability, focuses on empowering patients and solving interoperability barriers.
Genni Butt is one of the users who has benefitted from PocketHealth: “I started using it while hospitalized in 2021. Since then, I have continued to use it while receiving treatment for back pain to help coordinate my care between hospitals, my family doctor, and physiotherapists.”
Phil Boyer, former head of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, gauged it perfectly. As he put it, “I think technology, to me, is 30 per cent of the problem. He emphasized that human factors and systemic issues play crucial roles in the current state of healthcare data management.
The federal health minister’s recent directive to include non-physician health professionals in public insurance represents an effort to expand healthcare access and services. As Mark Holland noted, it serves as a critical opportunity to address digital health priorities: “We’re using this as an opportunity to advance these digital health priorities.”
As Canada moves forward with its healthcare reforms, stakeholders must consider both technological advancements and the human elements involved in patient care. Efficient and secure electronic medical records, the dream of so many, still remain a work in progress. It requires accountability and real leadership from elected leaders, but those who lead our healthcare institutions.
