Seawatch Medical Systems Upgrade

We will be replacing our Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system. This system is the backbone of the clinic, helping us manage booking schedules, allowing our doctors to make and record notes from your visits, enabling our billers to invoice and receive payment for the work the doctors perform - the list is long.

We last made a change back in 2009. As you can imagine, technology has developed a lot in that time. Our current EMR has been great and is still in use with many clinics. But over time our demands on it have begun to exceed its capabilities. For example, our current patient self booking tool is an 'add-on' solution to the EMR. This is fine, but the more times we have exceeded the capabilities of our current EMR then the more external add-on solutions are needed, adding to complexity and cost in running the clinc.

The new solution has far more features built into it as standard from the offset - for example the patient self booking part is one of many reasons we chose to make the switch.

We are planning this switch at the end of May, 2024. Of course there could be something that changes this timeline, and we will only be going ahead once we are confident all patient data and other related information has been integrated successfully.

How will this affect you, our patients?

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There are a few aspects that will impact you as a patient of the clinic. This falls into short and long term changes. But there aren't many of either, so don't worry too much.

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1. Short term changes

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As the new system is introduced, we will all need a little extra time to get used to it. Currently we are planning for the go-live on May 30th, 2024, so that week and the following week we will need to book slightly fewer appointments to ensure our staff and physicians are comfortable with the new system. This shouldn't last more than a few days in either week.

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This does mean that if you have regular recurring prescriptions, then we would advise that you  have these renewed a little earlier than usual if you were planning on seeing us in the go-live weeks.

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There will be one morning - currently May 28th - when our office will be closed for staff training. The doctors will be offering phone calls only at that time. In the afternoon of May 28th the doctors will be completing their training, so the office will be open for but no doctors will be working.

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Aside from that other changes will be minimal. We will post all updates here and on our Facebook page.

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2. Long term changes

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As we will switch to a new patient self booking system, this will be the main change you will notice. The current system will cease to work on May 28th. The new system has an inbuilt patient portal where you will be able to self-book appointments as well as receive results and communications from your doctor. We will set this platform live about a week after we are live on the new solution. More updates here and on Facebook at the time approaches, including how to sign up (spoiler alert: it's pretty easy and if you have an email account already you've nothing to worry about).

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Importantly, both our current EMR and the new EMR are fully compliant with all Canadian Data Regulations. You can read about our policies here.

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