New Visions in Health. New Vision Family Health Team.

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Ones and zeroes are good for your health. It’s something Dr. Mel Cescon discovered after digitizing a few tons of paper medical records for his clinic’s 12,000 patients. “For many years our physicians would take notes during visits,” he says. “They’d scribble messages down in pencil or pen. It was difficult to read and virtually impossible to search.” There was no way to review medical histories short of leafing through pages and deciphering scribbles. It took time and energy, which limited doctor-patient interaction. “Now I can search through records almost instantly, which gives me more time with my patients,” says Cescon.

Cescon’s clinic, New Vision Family Health Teams in Kitchener, Ontario, has more than 50 Macs running the Practice Solutions Suite, an electronic medical records (EMR) application. Like physicians everywhere, Cescon and the other doctors at New Vision deal with medical records every day. Unlike other physicians, they don’t have to deal with paper.

“There are many things we can do with electronic records that aren’t possible with paper,” Says Cescon. That includes performing quick searches to track medical history and check for drug interactions, forwarding cases to specialists, plotting graphs, storing photographs, reviewing X-ray reports and faxing prescriptions—things that can benefit any physician, anywhere. They also have a system that anyone can comprehend with little training. “It’s really made things very efficient here and we have more time for health care,” says Cescon. “That’s due in large part to our Macs.”

Paper-ectomy

Paper occupies valuable space in a medical office. “Last summer we had 13 file cabinets full of paper,” says Cescon. “More than 330 linear feet of it.” And that’s not the most paper Cescon has seen. The family physician has been in medicine for 30 years. During that time, he’s shuffled enough paper to stretch from Vancouver to Halifax. That’s why he decided to find a better way to deal with records.

He found it in Macs and Practice Solutions. “Compared to PCs, Macs are easier to learn,” he says. “That makes a big difference. The faster someone can learn, the sooner we can treat patients.” Stability was also key: No medical office should have computer problems while administering care. “Macs are reliable and that’s vital,” says Cescon.

His staff, along with outside help, scanned the paper records so they could be stored on the server. In a few months, New Vision was nearly paperless. The notes, letters, messages, progress reports and prescriptions now occupy bytes on an Xserve, not bulky file cabinets. All of the day-to-day information is data, and data, unlike paper, can be manipulated.

“With electronic records, you have the power of data at your disposal,” says Cescon. “If we receive new information from health officials, I can pull up patients who meet the criteria.” When policies for mammograms or colonoscopies change, Cescon can find patients who need the screenings and let them know to come in. “I can have a letter out to them in minutes,” says Cescon.