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Ontario has a service called
Health Care Connect to help residents seeking for a family doctor. Currently
resident has to call Health Care Connect to go through 20-minute questionnaire and
waited for a family doctor available.
1.
Trouble of
calling health care connect
-
If we didn’t
have a family doctor, we could fill out the questionnaire by using a Health
Care Connect’s web site in a few minutes.
-
If we had
previously a family doctor, but we wanted to change our family doctor, we would
go through a list of 20-minute questions by phone, which is very frustrating. We
do relocating from a city to another city sometimes, thus we would need to
change a family doctor.
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Family
doctor is needed for children for regular check-up and vaccination. For adults,
walk-in clinics are sufficient.
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Nothing we
could improve by getting a family doctor open for new patients, by the way.
2.
How to
improve the system
We could improve the service by using
web site and Internet for residents. Residents
would have the same options to call Health Care Connect and go through 20
minutes of questionnaire, if wanted.
a.
Information
submitted by a family doctor
Each family
doctor is required to enter data at a Health Care Connect’s web site if they’re
open to accept new patients in their areas.
Each family
doctor would also require removing “availability” of accepting new patients, if
they’re at full capacity, at the same web site.
Health Care
Connect’s official should receive a notification email by system automatically
in both cases “availability and no longer available” for new patients up on information
entered by a family doctor.
The
information is stored in database and presented in another format for officials
to know which family doctors are available in an area.
b.
Searching
for a family doctor for the first time
-
We could use
the existing web page for residents to fill out the questionnaire and submit
information.
-
Health Care
Connect would look at their data in 2a, and decide if there are family doctors
available. If yes, they could contact the residents and provide phone numbers.
The officials would “mark” the available slot as “pending” to be removed
pending to new patients.
-
It is up to
the family doctor and resident to set up an appointment. If appointment was
setup, the family doctor must go to the web site above to officially lower or
completely remove “availability to new patients.” Notification should be sent
to healthcare officials to confirm this, the “mark space” above would be removed
permanently from “”pending”.
รจ We wanted to avoid cases that Health
Care Connnect refers more patients than available space by a family doctor. On
the flight data must be recorded.
c.
Reallocating
or disputed with current family doctor
If a
resident is moving from a city to another city OR being disputed with current
family doctor, they would follow similar procedure with questionnaire as above
except
-
There would
be another field to enter reasons for leaving the current family doctor.
-
Health care
official would review the reasons of changing a family doctor. Actions for
disputed would be another story.
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Health Care
Connect would send an email to the existing family doctor to inform him/her
about a patient is leaving including the reasons.
-
Within 5
business days, the family doctor would open the web site at Health Care Connect
to discharge the patient. Resolving dispute would be a separate process. The
health care’s official should receive a notification by the system automatically.
-
The process
of finding a new family doctor for the patient would be started as in 2b.
d. System could automatically send a message to a predefined email address as a notification to trigger a process. There were a few cases in 2a - 2c, which required email notification.
If a “pending to be removed” space hasn’t been removed by 30 days, system could send an email notification. Officials could make a phone call to figure out what’s wrong and update data, if needed.
System could try to match up residents and available family doctors based on the distance between the clinic and resident’s address. However there are a few more concerns regarding special needs of a resident for a family doctor. Thus screening by a healthcare official would be needed.
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