Trillium In The News

Mississauga Business Times

Trillium embraces latest technology

July 2003

In a recent Mississauga Business Times column, Gaylen Duncan, then president and CEO of the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC), expressed the view that health care was one of the major areas in which technology would have an increasing impact on the everyday lives of Canadians.

At Mississauga’s Trillium Health Centre, technology is certainly playing a major role in streamlining the delivery of patient services, providing remote access for doctors to various patient diagnostic records, and enhancing management decision-making capabilities, all with the primary objective of improving delivery of health care.

Trillium Health Centre provides primary, secondary and tertiary services to a community of approximately one million residents. Operating across two sites-the Mississauga Site and the Queensway Site-Trillium offers a broad range of inpatient and outpatient health care services, and is one of Ontario’s leading community hospitals, with expanding tertiary care programs in cardiac care, stroke, orthopaedics and neurosurgery.

Over the past five years, Trillium has established itself as a health care organization that has moved beyond the traditional role of a community hospital to one that is increasingly recognized for its unique and innovative approaches to health care management and patient care delivery.

The application of technology to improving the delivery of health care services to the community is a primary objective of Trillium’s information technology (IT) department, under the leadership of Chief Information Officer (CIO) Wayne Mills, and Director of Information Technology Lori Driscoll.

“Over the past few years, our organization has made considerable advances in the application of technology to the provision of health care,” notes Mills, “and we are now considered to be one of the leading Ontario hospitals in applications such as capturing patient imaging diagnostics- x-rays, CT scans, MRIs- as electronic files and making these files available to doctors and patients.

Our image capturing system, which we call the ‘enterprise image management systems’ (EIMS), enable doctors to have immediate access to patient diagnostic imaging, from their home or office, by accessing electronic files stored in our computer system.

Patients who need to have this medical information for referral visits to other health care facilities are provided with a CD-ROM.”

The EIMS was a major commitment for Trillium and as Driscoll explains it, “with its successful implementation and the commitment of the physicians, we have demonstrated the benefits of technology and are now well-positioned to use IT systems to deliver the right solutions to other care providers, and for other health care applications.”

Physicians at Trillium are avid supporters of EIMS. Dr. Norman Hill, Deputy Chief of Staff at Trillium Health Centre describes the benefits of the image management system.

“Having X-ray images on line makes my job as a physician easier. I can view x-rays from anywhere I have high speed access and have been able to give advice from home in the middle of the night to emergency room physicians, based on reviewing x-rays on line.”

“I used to spend a lot of time obtaining x-rays on film,” he added, “and that waste of my valuable time has completely disappeared. It is also easy to compare previous films to the most current ones. EIMS is a giant step forward towards the development of the electronic health record.”

“We are now in phase 1 of EIMS,” explains Driscoll. “In phase 2, we will expand the patient information captured electronically to include pathology, endoscopy, and cardiac diagnostics. In the past, hospitals had ‘islands of diagnostic activity’ that were not connected. At Trillium we are making the connection, so that a patient’s medical history, treatment, diagnostic procedures and results, both graphics and text, are all on one record, accessible by health care professionals.”

The process of conversion of patient diagnostic imaging from hard copy to electronic files is a time-consuming and costly endeavour, and is an evolving project. Applications need to be developed and health care professionals- doctors, nurses, technicians- need to be trained in the use of the new system. Trillium uses a ‘train-the-trainer’ model in which doctors who are trained, train other doctors.

Another major application of technology at Trillium is in the decision-making and project management area. Trillium’s approach to this requirement has resulted in an award-winning application, known internally by the development team as the ‘executive dashboard.’ Trillium was recently awarded the prestigious 3-M National Health Care Quality Team award for the second year in a row, at the Canadian College of Health Care Service Executives (CCHSE) awards ceremony in Edmonton. The Canadian College of Health Care Service Executives is the national professional association and certification body for health care managers, and the award recognizes quality and innovation as well as exemplary teamwork by the recipient hospital.

Trillium received the award for its innovative and officially named ‘performance excellence dashboard.’ The Dashboard is an electronic monitoring and measurement tool used to support strategic decision-making, quality initiatives and measures. The awards committee considered the dashboard to be a unique, ground-up development, and Gaston Levac, president and CEO of CCHSE, noted that “Trillium continues to demonstrate leadership and innovation in health care.”

In discussing how the dashboard is used, Ken White president and CEO of Trillium Health Centre, comments that “like many organizations, Trillium collects vast amounts of data, and while there is an abundance of data, it actually provides little useful information. In fact, rather than supporting individuals and teams in their decision-making, the overwhelming amount of data can be confusing.” The dashboard allows Trillium to dovetail data and information into relevant, useful knowledge, supporting Trillium health care professionals’ ability to make good and timely decisions.

The significance of the innovation crosses many health care boundaries. For data measurement and indicator development, the dashboard is cutting edge in the cohesiveness of information and responsiveness to data. In strategic planning the dashboard focuses the entire organization on priorities and provides useful information about effectiveness in achieving the priorities. For the community and patients, the capabilities of the dashboard enables health care professionals to focus on improvements in care and services as the information they need is available, reliable and accessible.

Brian Edmonds, Trillium’s chief financial officer, was one of the key senior executives involved in the development of the dashboard, and uses this application extensively. “The dashboard was developed by our in-house IT team,” he explains, “ and is currently available to department heads who use it to track and monitor on-going projects. Using a series of charts and graphs, supported by textual information, management personnel can evaluate key performance characteristics, make changes to processes, if required, and monitor the changes. It has been a great tool for assisting our staff to be more efficient in delivering patient services and in managing development projects.”

“Hospitals need to run on a business-like basis, and we justify the financial benefits of each application of technology, as well as the quality of service benefits and how the application will fit into our long-term strategic plan. Our expectation is that while the application of technology may not result in immediate direct cost savings, there will be long-term savings that will enable us to invest more in patient care facilities in the future.
Our plan is to gradually make the dashboard available to all management personnel and eventually to all health care professionals.”

Both Mills and Driscoll are enthusiastic about this application which has found a very receptive audience among hospital management personnel. As Driscoll describes it, “the dashboard is an operational decision-making tool which provides a graphic and textual status report on the numerous projects that are on-going at the hospital.”

The successful application of technology at Trillium is serving as a model for other Ontario hospitals. “There are a relatively few number of Ontario hospitals that are as advanced as Trillium in the application of technology to the delivery of health care services,” notes Mills, “and other hospitals consider Trillium to be as a model in this field.”

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