Bay of Plenty live with interactive regional portal

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Picture: BoP DHB chief medical information officer Matthew Valentine

eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Bay of Plenty DHB is live with a new interactive read-write capable version of the Midland Clinical Portal (MCP).

The MCP first went live in July 2017 , providing a read-only view of real-time patient information via a shared instance of Orion Health’s clinical portal product visible across the five Midland region DHBs – Bay of Plenty, Lakes, Hauora Tairāwhiti, Taranaki and Waikato.

Bay of Plenty became the first of the region’s DHBs to implement the new interactive portal on October 13, replacing its inhouse-developed clinical workstation.

New functionality includes electronic Transfers of Care (discharge summaries), pre-anaesthetic assessments and e-Progress note software built on the Orion Clinical Pathways toolset. 

Chief medical information officer Matthew Valentine says the transition to MCP has gone very well.

"Of course there have been some typical teething issues, but the technical issues are being sorted and clinicians are positive about the new system," he tells eHealthNews.nz.

Valentine sits on the regional clinical authority group for the MCP, which has representatives from all the DHBs and ensures the project is clinically driven. 

“This a regional project so we’re having to take the whole region on this journey. This means it won't go as fast as it potentially could otherwise, but we'll end up with something that's really consistent and powerful across the region,” he says.

Hauora Tairāwhiti is the next DHB due to go live with the interactive portal in early 2021, followed by Lakes DHB.

When all DHBs are live with the read-write portal, Valentine says the Midland region will have a seamless clinical experience for both patients and clinicians, who often move between the area’s hospitals.

He says Bay of Plenty’s implementation includes Orion’s collaborative worklist feature which he believes will be a “really powerful tool” as it allows staff to share worklists with different teams.

Initially, electronic progress notes will only be used in some services and will remain largely on paper, however Valentine says the new portal provides the DHB with the base to build “more cool stuff on” as it progresses towards a fully digital workflow.

Chief information officer Richard Li says the DHB had a comprehensive training programme as part of the preparation for go-live, including its own clinical training team reinforced with resources from HealthShare.  

The DHB provided classroom, lecture and on-live modules running regularly over the past few weeks.  
 
Li says the DHB has a wide variety of devices already in use across its facilities which clinicians will use to access the portal and plans to refine its strategy based on the first few months of use.  

This article was updated on October 14 2020.

If you would like to provide feedback on this news story, please contact the editor Rebecca McBeth.

Read more news:

Interactive Midland Clinical Portal on its way
Millions of documents uploaded to Midland clinical portal

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