More than 50 Ontario hospitals are saving about $40,000 per
month after moving to Smart System for Health Agency's (SSHA)
health card validation system from the Ministry of Health and
Long-Term Care's network.
The new network - dubbed ONE -- is a secure, private network,
specifically for health care providers, according to Anne Lawrence,
business manager, telehealth, and eHealth Solutions, SSHA.
"We are the network through which the hospitals access the
health card validation that belongs to the Ministry of Health,"
Lawrence said. "We are the 'highway' the validation process takes
place over."
And both the Ministry and the hospitals benefit from using the
ONE Network, she said.
"The Ministry benefits, because the number of firewalls they
have to co-ordinate has been reduced as a result of the hospitals
transitioning over to the SSHA network," Lawrence said.
The benefits for the hospital include cost savings because they
don't have to pay for monthly network costs to access the health
card validation application over a different network, she said.
"(Ontario hospitals) can now do it over our secure network,"
Lawrence said.
Moving to the ONE Network eliminates a cost and simplifies each
hospital's IT environment by having one less external connection,
SSHA said in a release.
Using the SSHA ONE network means savings of about $600 per month
for Stratford General Hospital, according to its director of IT,
Russell Dick.
"The change to the SSHA health card validation system was not
seen by the end-user, only the IT department," Dick said. "It was a
pretty seamless transition."
It is something other IT departments are saying as well,
according to Lawrence.
"I have received many emails from IT departments at hospitals
saying how seamless the transition was," she said "I have received
very positive feedback that the implementation at the different
hospital sites was very well received."
An additional project underway utilizing the ONE Network is the
Drug Profile Viewer, Lawrence said.
"It's going to enable emergency departments to access medication
history for patients coming into the emergency room," she said.
"That would be the next logical step, it's another example of a
health-related application."
"Detailed planning is very important when you're talking about
these kinds of initiatives," Lawrence said. "The more ways that
health care providers can leverage the infrastructure that's been
invested in, to provide this managed private network, the less
stress there will be on the public health care system overall from
a financial standpoint."
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