Doctors asked to wait for electronic records

Health PEI is urging doctors to hold off computerizing patients' records at their offices until a provincewide integrated system is launched.

'It's a silo of information and they won't benefit from having the full clinical picture.' Liam Whitty: Health PEI

Liam Whitty, executive director of health information management, expects the first doctor's offices will get Health PEI's electronic records three years from now. A growing number of physicians have decided that's too long to wait. On Monday two doctors in O'Leary will open a new practice that will include electronic records for patients.

Whitty said doctors who launch in advance of a provincial system will have to pay their own costs, and they will have trouble communicating with provincial records when they become available.

"They [will] have a lack of integration between their local solution and the province's electronic health records systems," he said.

"If they would choose to implement their own it's really an island of information; it's a silo of information and they won't benefit from having the full clinical picture."

Health PEI decided to leave patient records at doctors' offices as the last phase of its e-health record project. The province has been working on that project for 12 years.