Review of MyDoctor.ca

I've posted about mydoctor.ca before but here is another review that was report in a local newspaper. Keep in mind that the paper is interviewing the medical director of the program so the report is quite biased but still informative.

The idea is to create a secure site for patients to access and get basic EMR information. Currently it's being used for diabetes control, obesity and asthma. There is also a way to securely email back and forth. For a discussion on high stakes email go here. Of course, there is the on-going question of billing for email. The publicly funded medical system is called OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan) and it does not compensate for email. Interestingly Dr. Mercer makes a claim that the system helps improve patient flow but doesn't put any numbers to it. Given how difficult it can be to achieve even 2-3% improvements using EMR I'd like to know if it really improved things or just improved the experience for the a patient. Anyway, it's a good article so check it out.