Ontario prescription database open to some, not all doctors

An information-sharing computer system that was piloted at Guelph General Hospital has been successfully rolled out to hospitals across the province, but other health care providers are still waiting for access.

The computer system, known as the digital health drug repository, gives approved health care providers access to a patient's medical history, including a list of medications.

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At the time the system was being tested at Guelph General, emergency room physician Dr. Ian Digby said having that information at his fingertips was a game changer.

"Many people who come in a state of crisis - emergency departments are always stressful, of course - they can't recall what they do take," he said.

"As long as I have some demographic information, some way to identify them - ideally a health card - then I'm able to log into the system and find out information on them."

When it was first tested in September 2016, the digital database only included a list of medications obtained through the Ontario Drug Benefit program.

In December 2016 it expanded, allowing doctors to search for information stored in the Narcotics Monitoring System, which is the government's record of every prescription filled in Ontario for one of the drugs listed under its Narcotics Strategy.

Not all have access

Although senior officials with eHealth Ontario did indicate to CBC News in January that all physicians would have access to the digital health drug repository by the end of the year, only "authorized" health care providers have been given access.

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"The plan has always been to have the Digital Health Drug Repository accessible to authorized health care providers ... in 2017," the ministry said in a statement.

That goal was partially met in June 2017, when providers at 200 sites across Ontario gained access to the system. The ministry said "all other authorized organizations ... are expected to have access to [the system] by March 2018 pending the organization's ability to meet required privacy and security requirements."

Of the 200 sites with access to the system, the ministry said 130 are hospitals, includinghospitals in Waterloo region and Wellington County:

• Cambridge Memorial Hospital
• Grand River Hospital
• Groves Memorial Hospital
• Guelph General Hospital
• North Wellington Health Care
• St. Mary's General Hospital

No more 'guess work'

But hospitals aren't the only health care providers who need or want access to a digital health drug repository.

Stacey Bricknell, who works as a nurse practitioner at the Kitchener Downtown Community Health Centre, said having access to a patient's medical history would take the guess work out of prescribing.

In the past, I used to have to call pharmacies all around the city to try and track down prescriptions.- Stacey Bricknell

"It just gives you an idea of what people were on before, what they tolerated well," she told CBC News. "So, yeah, it definitely takes the guess work out and makes you feel more comfortable about it."

About five or six years ago, Bricknell and her colleagues did have access to their patients's prescription information, through another eHealth Ontario pilot project called the drug profile viewer.

She said it was great to be able to see what medication a new client was on or had been on, how good they were at refilling a prescription, or whether they were in the habit of double doctoring the practice of getting prescriptions from multiple doctors.

"In the past I used to have to call pharmacies all around the city to try and track down prescriptions. So, this was much easier to just log into one database and be able to find out what their medications were," she said.

Need for a new system

But a few years after it was introduced, the system started to slow down.

Bricknell said she had trouble logging in, changing her password, or getting new team members signed up.

"I think it came down to IT issues: our system couldn't speak to their system," she said. "No one could figure out what the problems were. I was caught in the middle of it and I gave up."

She said that within the last year, the system "ground to a halt" and no one is using it now, which is why she is so interested in the new digital database.

"I think all of the health care providers here would appreciate it," she said, "so that when people are requesting renewals, we just know if anything else has been happening with their medications."

The Kitchener Downtown Community Health Centre does have the technology to run the digital health drug repository, so it could become an authorized health care provider.

Bricknell said there is interest to get connected, but wasn't sure what the process would be or how long it would take before staff had access to the database.