The right information available where and when it’s needed most – Canterbury District Health Board

Canterbury DHB accesses patient data from secondary and primary care providers and makes that data visible in a single shared patient record at the point of care.

The Customer

Canterbury District Health Board, New Zealand’s second largest DHB, serves over 560,000 people in the Canterbury region. Canterbury District Health Board is the main planner and funder of health services in Canterbury; a tertiary provider of hospital and specialist services for the Canterbury population as well as some specialist services for people living elsewhere in New Zealand.

The Canterbury vision is of an integrated health system that keeps people healthy and well in their own homes, providing the right care and support, to the right person, at the right time and in the right place.

The Challenge

The destructive 2011 earthquake and subsequent aftershocks damaged more than 14,000 rooms so that repairs were necessary to every one of Canterbury DHB’s 200 buildings. More than 630 rest home beds and 105 acute inpatient services beds were lost. Many General Practices and pharmacies were also severely disrupted. The earthquakes caused a loss of paper records and disrupted access to electronic records. So, when a displaced population signed up with a new General Practice, some did so without any medical history.

The challenge was to enable shared access to patient records across both secondary and primary care, including general practice, pharmacy and community nursing. The goals set in developing a secure shared care record were to:

• Collect patient data from secondary and primary care providers and make the data visible in a single shared patient record;
• Provide access to patient data at the point of care for multiple providers, aimed at providing better, more integrated care.

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