KINGSTON, May 8, 2018 – Novari Health’s eReferral and central intake technology has gone live in the North West and Central LHIN regions of the province. The 14 Local Health Integration Networks have been mandated to implement a central intake and rapid clinical assessment model of care for patients being referred for possible hip or knee replacement surgeries. To efficiently and economically meet this provincial access to care requirement, most LHINs are deploying eReferral and central intake enabling technologies. Novari Health, a long-standing leader in this area, has been engaged in much of the province to deploy the Novari Access to Care® software platform and specifically the Novari eRequest® module.
Novari eReferral and central intake technology has been selected and implemented as the enabling technology to support Ontario’s Intake & Coordinated Access Model for hip & knee referrals (MSK) in the north west of the province. The Regional Orthopedics Program affiliated with Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (TBRHSC), is an Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) Musculoskeletal Centre of Excellence beta site, serving the geographic region of the North West Local Health Integration Network (NW LHIN). Novari’s team, based out of Kingston, worked closely with the Regional Orthopedics Program to achieve the first go live of such an MSK eReferral and central intake enabling technology in the province.
This recent success in the north west of the province was quickly followed by a second successful go live of the Novari technology in the Central LHIN, serving a population of nearly 1.9 million people.
The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) recognizes existing intake and coordinated assessment models that serve patients with musculoskeletal (MSK) related conditions have significantly benefited these patients as well as positively impacted surgical wait times. The Ministry has mandated the expansion of such models beginning in 2017/18, working with all Local Health Integration Networks to coordinate implementation locally. The Novari Health Access to Care® Software Platform is widely used across the province and has processed tens of thousands of “centralized intake” referrals. Novari is the only system available that can manage wait times and access to care across the care continuum:
- Wait 0: Novari eVisit™ allows patients to have virtual appointments (e.g. video conference, secure messaging, secure audio) with their family primary care provider.
- Wait 1: Novari eRequest® electronically manages referrals with or without central intake for any type of referral for any type of healthcare service.
- Wait 2: Novari ATC™ provides hospitals, LHINs, regional health authorities and surgical offices with wait list management and eBooking for patients queuing for surgical services.
- Wait 3: Novari eRequest® electronically manages the referral process for patients being discharged from acute care facilities and referred to alternative levels of care (e.g. complex continuing care, long term care, palliative care, etc.).
The Novari Access to Care platform’s ATC module was successfully deployed across the North West LHIN in 2017 as the regional surgical eBooking and wait list management solution. With the current successful implementation of the Novari eRequest module, MSK referrals are being processed electronically at the Regional Orthopedics Program’s central intake office in Thunder Bay and then electronically routed, using the Novari platform, to 1 of 4 MSK assessment centres throughout the region. At the assessment centres, patients are clinically evaluated by an advanced practice physiotherapist or other skilled practitioner and, if qualified for surgery, are electronically referred using Novari technology to individual orthopedic surgeons for a surgical consult.
In the North West LHIN region, patients proceeding to surgery will electronically transition from “wait 1” (the initial wait time associated with a referral) to “wait 2” (the wait time associated with the wait for the surgical procedure). This seamless ability to electronically manage both wait 1 and wait 2 is unique to Novari Health and provides surgeons, hospitals and most importantly patients with an integrated end-to-end solution to manage the continuum of care.
For security, scalability, and ease of implementation, the cloud based Novari Access to Care platform is being provided as software as a service, hosted on Microsoft’s Canadian Azure cloud infrastructure.
About Novari Health
Based in beautiful Kingston, Ontario; Novari has offices in Vancouver, Boston and Sydney Australia. Novari focuses exclusively on designing, building and implementing healthcare software solutions that improve access to care for patients and the efficiency of the healthcare system.
Contact
John Sinclair
President
