AMPLIFI stands for the information obtained in a patient’s chart during a transfer: Allergies, Medications, Problem List and Immunizations For Integration (AMPLIFI). Project AMPLIFI is part of a broader initiative called Traverse Exchange Canada, a secure cloud-based network that enables the flow of health information between participating organizations. Last month, Halton Healthcare joined 65 Long-Term Care Homes (LTCH) and MEDITECH Expanse hospitals (Queensway Carlton, Holland Bloorview, Care4 and the Mental Health Cluster) who are participating in this Ministry of Health and Ministry of Long-Term Care funded project.
At points of transfer to or from a facility, a patient’s visit information will transmit into the electronic health record of the receiving Long-Term Care facility or hospital. Shared information includes the patient’s encounter details, provider notes, laboratory, and imaging results, administered medications, discharge summaries and more. This data provides caregivers a comprehensive understanding of the patient’s journey while minimizing the time required to gather information from external sources. It is not reliant on the patient’s recollection and therefore can help reduce errors or provide important information in an emergency.
Project AMPLIFI advances Halton Healthcare’s mission to provide integrated community hospital care by connecting patients with participating health care partners and allowing for a better patient experience.
Quotes
“Project AMPLIFI helps provide health care providers with a fuller picture of the patient’s journey when they enter our hospitals for care. Our teams have worked together to ensure the data is accurate and that patient information is handled in a safe, private, and secure fashion. This has been a great partnership between our teams, informatics, pharmacy, our vendor (MEDITECH), the Project AMPLIFI team (from St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton) and other organizations. We are looking forward to seeing more institutions come on board!”
Brendan Kwolek,
Chief Information and Digital Officer, Halton Healthcare
“This is a good opportunity to uphold patient safety and improve the patient experience. Patients don’t want to have to tell the same story over and over again, and this gives us the opportunity to do more confirmation. In patient surveys that’s something we hear so often, that they have to repeat the same story and this is helping us streamline a lot of that work prior to them being with us.”
“It’s really encouraging that this project isn’t just about hospitals, that we are working with LTCH and that we’re looking at the bigger continuum of care, rather than just acute care to acute care, which is bringing in the conversation that we are one province providing health care. I’m really proud of our team and their hard work and collaboration with our partners in the AMPLIFI team and Meditech.”
Deanna Mol,
Interim Director Digital Health Optimization, Halton Healthcare
“Ensuring connectivity and information sharing between organizations in the healthcare space is an impactful way to reduce medication errors at care transitions. Interoperability will be the focus of healthcare infrastructure projects in the coming years. Project AMPLIFI is a welcome step towards a unified provincial healthcare system.”
Kishan Aundhia,
Pharmacy Manager, Halton Healthcare
“The exciting part is connecting the patient information from different care settings. Halton Healthcare looks after patients from neighbouring hospitals and LTCH that are geographically very close to us. Project AMPLIFI helps with sharing of the patient’s medical history. For example, patients from LTCH may not be able to speak for themselves and this technology would facilitate the process. Having this information electronically delivered to the electronic medical record directly makes it easy for all clinicians to access, and it will not get lost in paper shuffle like a fax would.”
Dr. Allan Lee,
Chief Medical Information Officer, Hospitalist, Halton Healthcare