News: Interior Health Launches Fully Integrated Strata Resource Matching and E-Referral™

Calgary, Alberta – December 12th, 2006: The Interior Health Authority (IH) has launched the web-based patient flow tool – Strata Resource Matching and E-Referral™ across the Okanagan under a multi year Agreement with Strata Health Solutions Inc.

IH contracted the implementation of Strata Resource Matching and E-Referral™ in May 2006 to speed long-term care placements from both the community and post acute care discharge. In recognition of IH’s focus on advanced IM/IT management, the project charter called for PathWays to be launched as a fully integrated management tool in combination with IH’s Meditech™ enterprise backbone and the Campana GoldCare™ RAI assessment application…an industry first.

“We have been truly impressed by the Strata Health Team,” stated Donna Lommer, IHA’s Executive Director – Okanagan. “Their flexibility, willingness to serve and commitment to deliver against expectations has been nothing short of amazing.”

The implementation of Strata Resource Matching and E-Referral™ included redesigning the Access & Transition Team’s overall process, which enabled a clearly defined best practice to emerge. Additionally, unanimous endorsement from IH staff and Providers was achieved as a result of their detailed involvement throughout the project.

“Once successfully implemented for transition to long-term care / residential beds, other Community streams including Assisted Living, Rehab & Recovery, Palliative and Adult Day Programs will be brought into the application” adds Lommer.

Of significant importance to adoption by front line clinicians was PathWays overall integration with other core systems. Through HL7 and XML feeds, Strata Resource Matching and E-Referral™ seamlessly pulls critical client information (including demographics and the RAI assessment) into the application, dramatically minimizing data input required by clinicians, while streamlining the overall patient journey and resulting data analysis.

Clint Schick, Strata Health VP commented “Interior Health’s comfort with advanced IM/IT integration allowed Strata Health to showcase the PathWays implementation of the future. PathWays was designed to complement the 21st century health EHR by on one hand, delivering a tool that effectively addresses the multitude of complex front line permutations that are the reality of managing patient flow, while on the other, incorporating leading edge integration standards to effectively support information access right across the care continuum – a key deliverable of increasingly automated health jurisdictions. Interior Health gave us the opportunity to deliver this right out of the gate! We look forward to building on this terrific partnership.

About the Interior Health Authority:

Interior Health serves a region that stretches from Williams Lake in the north to the US border in the south, and from Anahim Lake in the Chilcotin east to the Alberta border. The population of the area is almost 700-thousand and includes 35 Acute Care Sites, 4,427 Residential Beds and 17,000 Employees