The City has stepped up a notch in its quest to improve the provision of quality healthcare, with its digital health data ecosystem having recorded over 709 765 patients to date.
This significant milestone signals a major step towards using technology to transform the primary healthcare sector.
The City first enrolled the electronic health records system at its clinics in June 2016, heralding a new era in the provision of efficient and quality primary healthcare. This moved the municipality away from the old paper-based patient record system.
E-health now affords patients the opportunity to access their medical records at 66, of the City’s 81 primary healthcare centres.
The e-health system enables the municipality to improve all aspects of patient care, including privacy, efficiency, convenience, communication, and timeliness of medical records. Other benefits include being able to provide accurate, up-to-date information about patients at the point of care, enabling quick access to patient records for more coordinated and efficient care.
The system now enables nurses to reduce costs by handling less paperwork, cut down the duplication of testing and treatment, and improve access to primary healthcare, thus saving time.
Nthabiseng Tsotetsi, an Operations Manager at Crosby Clinic in Region B with over 30 years’ experience in the City’s Health Department, says e-health has revolutionised the provision of primary healthcare.
“Before the e-Health system, patient information was captured manually by different people at different times. It took time to consolidate patient information and often during data validation, it would be found that patient information was wrong. Also patient statistics were done manually, which took a lot of time and it took even longer to analyse the statistics manually,” Tsotetsi explains.
Through e-health, City nurses are now able to share, securely and easily electronic medical records with patients and other medical practitioners, reduce medical errors and provide overall healthcare convenience.
Tsotetsi and her colleagues use this technology to provide accurate prescriptions, enhancing efficiency, privacy, and security of patient data.
Tsotetsi says on average Crosby clinic sees over 3 182 patients a month. She confirms that e-health helps streamline the work of nurses.
“The e-Health system has greatly assisted in ensuring that report writing is done timeously and that statistics are accurate. Because the system is centralised it has also helped us identify patients who shop around for medication. The controlled booking system has made our employees lives easier,” she says.
The City’s Health Department plans to install a smart queuing system to stabilise patient lines at clinics and allow for the transfer of records from reception to consultation rooms using an anonymous numbering process. The system will include queue monitors at reception areas and access to booking appointments via a cellphone.
Embracing an electronic health records system in the delivery of primary healthcare is part of Joburg’s overall plan to deliver all municipal services through digital platforms, enabling the City to become Smart, comparatively with its first world counterparts.
