Unifying the EMR is not easy—it may do more harm than good

I, personally, don’t blame the ministry of health if they think that doctors do not work enough, especially during the pandemic, because that was what they heard. How can the ministry believe the opposite if someone reads an editorial describing family doctors in harsh terms and accusing them of laziness? How can we blame the ministry when they receive complaints from dozens of patients claiming the absence of their doctors—and that their doctors refuse to see them regardless whether these complaints are true or not? Read: Dr. Jabir Jassam: Workplace harassment: Wrestling with snakes I honestly do not blame the ministry, and based on what reached them, give them the right to release that quasi-punitive contract for all doctors. The truth is very few doctors were so fearful of the virus that they forgot their professional duty and their patients’ needs and wouldn’t see patients in person who needed it. The matter would have been less impactful if someone had showed our ministry the whole picture and explained that the vast majority of doctors worked so hard during the pandemic like bees. The majority of doctors endured the suffering of their patients and their families throughout those two harsh years. We tasted a bitterness that we have never tasted before and hopefully we will not taste again. But who would explain the real picture to the ministry? I wish that we had a representative who could do this job. Now that the Ontario fee contract has been ratified, we have to abide by it I can see that—based on the previous two years—the vast majority of doctors will have no issue with almost all of the items in this contract as we already committed to such things before this contract came out. At our clinic, for example, the number of patients who visit us weekly is much higher than what the ministry requires. Also, patients have fast access to us on the same day or the second day, and it happens lots that we ask the patient to come in immediately if we think the case requires urgent attention. However everyone knows that regardless of what we do, some patients with unrealistically high expectations will continue to be unhappy and unpleased. The main problem, which I hope the ministry will reconsider, is the plan to unify the EMR for all doctors in the same group, even if they are in different places. Giving access to patients charts to different locations will seriously risk our patients’ confidentiality. Moreover we cannot guarantee that our patients will not have relatives or friends who work in other clinics—as happened to one of my patients—and even if there is no one, this will never be without a risk. The cost of changing the EMR will be very high and beyond our ability to bear, especially since some of us have invested tens of thousands of dollars on our current EMR. I personally invested around $30,000 to have the EMR server settled in my office and my wife invested months to customize it to match our needs. If I hired somebody to do what my wife has done it would cost me probably another $40,000 if not more. Transferring patients’ files is another dilemma that will be a heavy burden on us and on all employees—not to mention the time we will spend training the staff and the expenses resulting from that. Moreover, if the ministry is the one who will fund the costs of this, then I see it as a waste of money that can be used in other important places which are many. In my opinion, this step will serve mainly the EMR industry. We have been working for many years in our current way and we see each other’s patients without any problem, so unifying the EMR will not serve our patients as it won’t make any difference. Therefore, I hope that the ministry will reconsider that and eliminate this item, because it will not harm us only but also our patients as well. Dr. Jabir Jassam is a family physician in Ottawa.

Unifying the EMR is not easy—it may do more harm than good

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