Hello Cindie,

Thank you for your post. Your use cases for the concept of Provider Group certainly establishes the need for the model. I look forward to seeing what discussion follows. Perhaps we can include as part of an upcoming web-conference for the group.

Peter

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The following narrative provides the high-level. Please see the Draft Discussion Document for our Implementation Proposal:
https://ic.infoway-inforoute.ca/resources/docs/coordofcare/214-2015-may-bc-discussion-document-provider-groups

We are looking to address the business/clinical workflow requirements to facilitate the following recipient models:
• Delivery to a Provider Group (e.g. a Care Team) as a recipient (with or without an organization defined)
• Delivery to a Provider Group (e.g. a Care Team) as a recipient (with or without a person defined)

Clinical Use Case Examples:
1. In an Enterprise level EMR or shared EMR solution, used in multiple locations, the Provider Group concept satisfies requirements in health information exchange that allow for appropriate notification to care teams, where membership to these care teams is dynamically changing in a complex healthcare environment. An example of a provider group would be a Heart Function team within a Chronic Disease Management team based care portfolio. The Provider Group concept is the most precise way to support information exchange distribution in an enterprise EMR / shared EMR, reducing complication in an otherwise complex system.
2. There are clinics throughout BC that establish their patient care model into teams of care providers in order to provide better workflow within their clinic. These occurrences are often found in the same physical location and practice, but are logically separated out in order to improve efficiencies within the clinic and reduce risks in terms of patient care. Naturally, these clinics seek to align their EMR systems with this workflow, and require the appropriate distribution information in order to do so. In these cases, the Provider Group concept is the best way to align the distribution of information exchange with the clinic’s established workflow, reducing complexity and assuring proper distribution.
3. There are locations where bringing in a long-term provider can be challenging. In these cases, Locums are brought in on a regular basis in order to support the clinic while it remains without a long-term provider. As a Locum may be seeing patients within the clinic for a very short amount of time, clinics do not typically seek to register the Locums with Data Exchange services such as CIX, POI, CDX, and Excelleris. These clinics typically seek to align their EMR systems with this workflow in the most simplistic way possible, leaving less room for missed clinical results / clinical documentation in the hand-off between Locums. The EMR requires the appropriate distribution information in order to do so. The Provider Group concept reduces the risk of failed distribution, while aligning with the EMR clinic’s need for a flexible concept to support accurate information distribution. Note that the rotating locum / no permanent provider situation might occur within a larger single system – e.g. if two physical sites were to merge as a single EMR instance, they would still want the provider groups to continue to exist separately, to continue to allow for separate processing of results for patients served by that location.
4. There are clinics set throughout BC with a specialized service and no permanent provider, where patient care performed within the clinic is handled by a rotational team of Providers who may have private practices outside of the specialized service clinic. One example of this would be a walk-in clinic, where Providers from within the community rotate through the walk-in clinic, covering patient care within the walk-in for a revolving duration. A Provider Group concept would best facilitate simplistic interoperability in regards to distribution of the Clinical Data Exchange.

Note: Our distribution system is currently facilitating the following recipient models:
• Delivery to a person as a recipient (with or without an organization defined)
• Delivery to an organization as a recipient (with or without a person defined)