Residents of 31 First Nations communities on Vancouver Island will be able to connect with a wide range of health-care providers from home via video calls or secure text messaging in the coming months.
Virtual care will allow patients to have regular access to a full range of health-care providers regularly without having to travel, said Nancy Gabor, virtual-care specialist for Mustimuhw Information Solutions Inc.
The expansion to virtual care will be rolled out to all the communities already supported by Mustimuhw’s electronic medical record system, including 31 on Vancouver Island.
Residents will be able to connect with community-health nurses, home-care nurses, mental-health-care providers, social workers, case managers, physical therapists, speech and language therapists and other providers.
The subsidiary of Cowichan Tribes is also working on an electronic prescription service that will allow information to flow directly from doctors to pharmacists, making it easier and faster to fill prescriptions. Patients will no longer have to bring written prescriptions to the pharmacy. The service, called PrescribeIT, will reduce the potential for transposing errors, lost prescriptions and privacy breaches and cut waiting time for patients, Kjargaard said. The service is already in use in some clinics and pharmacies in Ontario and Alberta, with pilot projects in Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick.
