November 5, 2023
CALGARY — Alberta Health Services (AHS) today completed its seventh launch of Connect Care, bringing more than 12,000 additional staff and physicians at 79 AHS and AHS-partner acute care and combined acute and long-term care sites onto the common provincial information system.
The initiative supports best practices across AHS, and enables all health records from AHS and its subsidiaries and partners to be accessed through one system. It also provides clinicians with common decision-making support.
Launch 7 involves sites and programs primarily in AHS North and South zones, including:
Albertans who have visited a site where Connect Care is in place can have access to MyAHS Connect, an online patient portal where people can see their health information, test results and medications; manage appointments; and communicate securely with their AHS healthcare team.
There are now more than 112,000 staff, physicians and other healthcare providers using Connect Care to improve care for patients in all five AHS zones. There are nine Connect Care launches, which started November 2019 and will continue to the final implementation in fall 2024. When fully in place, approximately 118,000 staff and physicians will be using Connect Care at 682 sites across Alberta.
“Each Connect Care launch brings more front-line healthcare workers, physicians and patients together to improve care in every corner of Alberta,” says AHS President and CEO Mauro Chies.
“With Launch 7, we have reached an important milestone: all AHS and our partner acute care sites, ambulatory care locations, lab services and diagnostic imaging teams in Alberta are now using Connect Care, and we are approximately one year from the full implementation of Connect Care across the province. This gives healthcare teams a more complete health history for patients, access to consistent information on best practices, and resources at their fingertips while maintaining the privacy of their information. Healthcare teams can also communicate with patients and each other more easily.”
The switch over to Connect Care went as planned as teams at these sites transitioned to the new information system at 5 a.m. today.
“AHS has worked for months carefully and comprehensively planning for Launch 7 of Connect Care as we’ve done for our previous launches. All launches to date have included plans to ensure the care we provide is never compromised during this transition,” says Dr. Francois Belanger, Vice President, Quality, and Chief Medical Officer, and Acting Vice President and Medical Director Cancer Care Alberta & Clinical Support Services at AHS. “Patients may see AHS staff taking a little extra time to complete their charting and other tasks during launch, and we appreciate the patience of the public while we undertake this important improvement.”
“The scale of Connect Care makes it one of the largest clinical system implementations in the world,” adds Sean Chilton, AHS Interim Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Clinical Operations, EMS and Information Technology. “We could not do this without the input and support of patients, physicians, nurses, midwives, other front-line staff, technical teams, and patient and family advisors who have been involved in every step in getting us to this the launch.”
Alberta Health Services is the provincial health authority responsible for planning and delivering health supports and services for more than four million adults and children living in Alberta. Our mission is to provide a patient-focused, quality health system that is accessible and sustainable for all Albertans. Our current focus is on reducing emergency department wait times, improving EMS response times, increasing access to surgeries, and improving patient flow.
