Pandemic Communication Issues to be Addressed at OHA HealthAchieve 2006 Speaker’s Session
Leaders Emphasize Need for Better Communications to Access and Mobilize Medical Resources
For Immediate Release
Contact: Mark Gregory: 866-472-4948
“Doctors are not prepared for pandemics”, said Dennis Reich, M.D., a practicing physician and technology consultant who will address the OHA HealthAchieve 2006 in Toronto. Dr. Reich, who sits on the Sudbury Pandemic Clinical Care Committee, will emphasize the need to improve communications among healthcare practitioners for better emergency preparedness. Dr. Reich will be joined by prominent leaders who are concerned about the present level of pandemic preparedness in Canada.
Joining Dr. Reich will be the Ontario College of Family Physicians (OCFP) Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, Ms Janet Kasperski. With 40 years of experience in healthcare, Ms Kasperski has a thorough understanding and deep respect for the role of family physicians. She will address the need for better communications with physicians in order to convey consistent information and changing safety procedures during a coordinated emergency response. Her broad-based background has allowed her to position the OCFP to provide leadership in identifying needed changes that will result in better healthcare for the people of Ontario.
“Reliable communications is the foundation of a structured plan”, says Ms Kasperski. “SARS gave us a heads up in terms of scheduling issues that nobody had bothered to address. Healthcare professionals who normally travelled from facility to facility had to decide on which institution they would work to prevent cross-contamination between facilities. Trying to organize and segregate physicians during SARS was an enormous job. We need to work on that area.”
Guest speaker Dr. Christopher Jyu from Scarborough General Hospital will also address the assembly on the need for better procedures to access physicians. Dr. Jyu, who has championed a number of innovative healthcare initiatives that have improved patient access, care, and satisfaction, had first hand experience in a hospital setting during a pandemic and knows the limitations of current scheduling methods for locating physicians. Paper-based schedules are often unreliable since they constantly change, and as a result, more time and manpower is wasted trying to mobilize resources–a luxury one may not have during emergencies.
“Traditional scheduling systems fail to address many isolation related problems, including the ease of making shift changes while dealing with highly contagious disease, or tracking quarantine exposed physicians,” said Dr. Jyu, who is a comprehensive care physician practicing at a private office, a walk-in clinic, and a number of local Emergency Departments in the Greater Toronto Area. “On-line schedulers and communication software would allow physicians to communicate without breaking quarantine, and could provide more accurate transfer of changing isolation protocols under quarantine circumstances.”
Dr. Jyu has integrated into the Scarborough General an on-line communications portal called Chyma™, which is a software solution proposed by Dr. Reich who found he needed a more reliable shift management procedure at the three Sudbury clinics with which he was associated. Working with Dr. Reich, Dr. Jyu chose Chyma™ because it addressed many of the concerns they faced during SARS, including the ability to provide an auditable record for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.
Representatives from Chyma Systems, whose parent company is IsaiX Technologies Inc., from Montreal, have been actively meeting with officials at Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada and leaders across the country interested in establishing a national pandemic plan for communicating with healthcare workers. Chyma Systems (www.chyma.net) has over 12,000 physicians in clinics and hospitals across Canada actively using its on-line portal.
All three speakers will address the OHA assembly on Tuesday, November 7th. The title of their presentation is “Physician Scheduling Software Provides Pandemic Communication Tool”, and will be held in hall 203AB at 9:15am. For further information on the OHA, visit: OHA HealthAchieve2006.
Chyma™ at the OHA HealthAchieve 2006 Exposition: Chyma™ will host booth 2030 during the OHA convention November 6-8th at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.