GTA LHINs “go live” - Mississauga Halton Local Health Integration ...

GTA LHINs Fall 2011
GTA LHINs “go live” with IAR
Months of hard work, peppered with enthusiasm
and commitment, were rewarded when
when 22 health service providers (HSPs) in
the Greater Toronto Area went live with the
Integrated Assessment Record (IAR) on
November 15. Another 25 GTA HSPs were
due to come on board by the end of the
month.
Central West, Mississauga Halton, Toronto
Central, Central, and Central East are the five
GTA LHINs that have achieved the Go Live
milestone in their IAR implementation journey.
A Go Live launch by webinar to cheer the early
adopters featured Mimi Lowi-Young, CEO of
the Central West LHIN, Rita Reynolds, Chief
Privacy Officer for North York General Hospital
and Andrew Hussain, Regional CIO for the
Mississauga Halton and Central West LHINs.
IAR will result in improved client/patient care,
as shared assessments provide a coordinated
approach to the provision of care,
Mimi said at the launch. “We
believe this project is truly an
innovation.”
“It has been a significant task to put in place
the privacy and security controls we require in
order to share assessment data,” added Rita.
“But today’s milestone proves that our collective
efforts have delivered results that we and
our patients and clients can rely on.”
Rita commended the CCIM Privacy
and Security Subcommittee for their
work in ensuring client/patient privacy
and noted the common understanding
of obligations implicit in the datasharing
agreement between organizations.
“The data-sharing agreement in particular
represents the culmination of an
extensive collaborative effort on the
Congratulations from the GTA Health
Information Network Provider (HINP)
“I’d like to congratulate all the health service providers that have embraced the IAR initiative,”
notes James Moolecherry, Chief Technology Officer, William Osler Health System.
“They are leaders in securely sharing patient assessments electronically with authorized
care providers.”
As the HINP, Osler serves as the repository for the assessment data.
James also congratulates and thanks the William Osler Health System’s Information
Services department members shown below along with Nicole Ellis, Judy Supleo and
Frank Kovacs. “They were all instrumental in the successful implementation of the IAR
HINP project. The system has been live and operational since November 8, 2011.”
Left to right: Joe Cossu, Nino Pilagatti, Wilfred De Guzman, John Go, Domenico
Consiglio, Paul Dhanote, Donavan Miller, Jason Williams, Tim Young, Michael Henry,
Senol Aydinli.
Congratulations
GTA LHINs!
part of many stakeholders,” she said.
Health service providers will benefit from getting
a holistic view of the patient — “a current,
real-time snapshot,” said Andrew. He noted
that IAR contributes to “well-informed, selfdirected
patient care.”
Left to right: Mimi Lowi-Young, Rita Reynolds, Andrew Hussain
What is the IAR
The Integrated Assessment Record is an application
that allows assessment information to move
with the client from one health service provider
(HSP) to another. HSPs can use the IAR to view
timely client assessment information electronically,
securely and accurately. It allows participating
HSPs to upload and view assessment information
from consenting clients based on the:
• Ontario Common Assessment of Needs
(OCAN) for outpatient community-based mental
health programs
• Resident Assessment Instrument – Mental
Health (RAI-MH) used by hospital for inpatient
assessments
• Resident Assessment Instrument – Minimum
Data Set (RAI-MDS 2.0) used by Long-Term
Care Homes for resident assessments
• interRAI Common Health Assessment
(interRAI CHA) used by community support
service agencies.
The Admission and Discharge Criteria and Assessment
Tools (ADAT) for clients entering Ontario's
addictions treatment system will be added
in the future.
CCAC data will be available in early 2012.

Congratulations
GTA LHINs!
St. Clair West Services for Seniors uploads first assessments
Being the first out of the gate is nothing new for St. Clair West
Services for Seniors. In 2008, it was among the first health service
providers to implement the interRAI CHA assessment. Since then it
has conducted more than 500 assessments and reassessments for its
clients.
It’s also one of 22 GTA LHIN HSPs that went live on the
IAR on November 15.
St. Clair West serves approximately 1,800 clients in the
Central and Toronto Central LHINs. Services include supportive
housing, day programs, case management, Meals
on Wheels, transportation, home help, respite care, community
development and a new elderly person centre. Six
case workers and intake workers are trained on the inter-
RAI CHA.
Narain Motwani, Manager of Community Support Services,
says that now the IAR is live, the team is working
diligently at getting the consent directives in place for
uploading. In doing this he says, “It’s important to speak to
our clients about consent in a language they understand.
They need to be informed and understand they have a
choice.”
Narain reports that he has already completed a successful
upload test with the help of the support team. He says
there is always a learning curve involved when one is
starting something new. “Having the support team on call
makes it easier to know what to do.”
The key to success is a willingness to learn and being
able to engage the whole team in the organization so that
What’s next for HSPs and IAR
For those who have implemented – as well as those
who will be going live in the future -- it is especially
important to remember to put our efforts into keeping
the momentum going.
As the IAR project expands and more assessments
are uploaded, it will play an increasingly significant role
in enabling the electronic sharing of assessment information
to improve care planning and delivery of services
to clients wherever they seek service. The
greater the number of assessments in the IAR, the
better the outcomes.
To this end, health service providers are asked to:
• Continue to upload assessments daily, An integral
part of IAR’s success is ensuring the availability of
good data.
• Instill good habits when uploading assessments.
Upload what you can, as soon as you can.
• Contact the CCIM Support Centre for help if
needed.
• Provide CCIM with feedback in your use of IAR.
they feel a part of the process, he adds. Although the IAR journey is
just beginning for St. Clair West, Narain sees a future in having access
to assessment data from other agencies and sectors.
“The ability to share information will be very helpful to our sector,
especially when CCAC information becomes available,” he concludes.
The team at St. Clair West includes front row, from left: Sujata Ganguli, Executive Director;
Narain Motwani, Manager of Community Support Services/User Coordinator and Uploader;
Ada Wong, Manager of Home Support Services/Privacy Officer; Andrea White, Asst. Executive
Director/User Authority
Back row from left are assessors Katharine Spears, Josie Di Placito, Sidrah Malik, Roxana
Guerreno, Linna Tran and Kamal Singh. Assessor Nancy Lourenco is absent.
CMHA Toronto welcomes IAR’s
protection of clients’ privacy rights
When staff at Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), Toronto Branch
learned about the Ontario Common Assessment of Need (OCAN), they quickly
saw the benefits to consumers when safely sharing assessments. So it made
sense to them to get involved early with the Integrated Assessment Record (IAR)
to ensure clients’ privacy rights are protected. They are among the GTA IAR innovators.
“We felt we owed it to clients to be part of the IAR initiative,” explains Laura
Monastero, Program Manager and Privacy Officer for CMHA Toronto. “Our
clients move through our services and one of the benefits of OCAN is to enable
them to tell their history once. IAR lets us view the assessment information in a
way that’s safe and secure.
“Our services and clients are linked all across the GTA and we want to protect
the clients’ privacy consistently with all providers,” she adds. “All the IAR training,
including concrete steps to develop customized privacy processes, helped us
formalize our processes to make consent understandable to consumers and
staff.
“Sharing assessments safely is key for us,” she stresses. “I feel comfortable
after all the privacy training that we all understand the privacy and security obligations
to ensure clients’ rights are protected.”