GN spends $14 million on electronic health records

CAMBRIDGE BAY — Local pharmacists and retail pharmacy outlets aren’t the only service the Government of Nunavut wants to dump in its move to revamp health operations.

Nunavut’s health department also plans to get rid of paper health records in favour of electronic health records by 2012, at a cost of about $14 million.

In support of its new way of doing things, the plan touts Tamapta, the GN’s mandate document for 2009 to 2013, which says the GN should identify “tools such as telecommunications that would allow opportunities for enhancing the work of decentralized offices.”

When the four-year plan to move away from paper, which started in 2008, is completed, Nunavut has said it hopes to eliminate mix-ups, poor care and gaps in health records that occur when paper gets lost.

About 80 per cent of the new paperless system will be paid for by Canada Health Infoway, a federally-funded, independent, not-for-profit organization whose members are the 14 federal, provincial and territorial deputy ministers of health.

After the health department’s budget is set out March 1, it may become clearer if some of this money is also earmarked for the GN’s new pharmacy plan.

But the new paperless system at the Kitikmeot health centre already appears to have bugs, with calls for routine appointments at the Cambridge Bay health centre being referred last week from the clerk to the nurse on call.