How a BC physician is using EMR data to improve his practice and provide better patient care

Dr Huy Nguyen, a family physician in New Westminster, made the decision to enrol with Health Data Coalition (HDC) so that he could use data from his practice to support him in panel management. It’s a decision he is glad he made.

“HDC Discover allowed me to review my patient panel and gave me a truer sense of the number of patients I actually take care of. In doing so, I realized I might have the capacity to take in new patients, says Dr Nguyen. “Additionally, it has allowed me to monitor chronic diseases in my patient panel. For example, with diabetes, I can see whether my patients' A1C's are up to date as a population, or with COPD I can see whether I've been good at encouraging pneumonia vaccination. This mentally reminds me to think about these when I see my patients in the office, or if we want to be more proactive, we can set up a process with our staff to recall or remind our patients about them and measure how we're doing over time.”

Dr Nguyen is one of hundreds of BC family doctors who have enrolled in the physician-led Health Data Coalition’s data-sharing application, HDC Discover. 

The application allows physicians to compare electronic medical record (EMR) data from their clinic to provincial averages in order to note trends and track changes over time, discuss tips with their colleagues, and enhance their learning. 

Starting this summer, the GPSC Practice Support Program (PSP) will be contacting physicians participating in the Panel Management and/or coaching initiatives, giving them priority to enrol in HDC Discover, which is available to physicians using OSCAR/WELL Health, TELUS Med Access, TELUS Wolf, MOIS, and Intrahealth Profile.
 
“Better data helps inform better care and better patient outcomes. We are excited to expand our application, HDC Discover, that puts data in the hands of family doctors and their teams,” said Dr. Shirley Sze, Chair of the HDC Board of Directors.
 
The General Practice Services Committee (GPSC), which funds and supports the HDC, saw a natural alignment with the PSP, which offers programs and services to help doctors build capacity in their clinical practices, enabling them to practice more efficiently, focus more on clinical care and patient relationships, and adopt attributes of the patient medical home in BC. The regional support teams at PSP have recently been trained on HDC Discover and, in partnership with their HDC colleagues, support family physicians and teams with this novel application.
 
Family physicians can get started with HDC Discover now at no cost. 

Learn more here or speak with your PSP coach to get started.