The Garry Hurvitz Centre for Community Mental Health at SickKids (GH-CCMH) is pleased to announce the launch of our new electronic health record (EHR) on Monday, April 15, 2024. An EHR is a crucial step in improving the quality of care and service for our clients, participants, families and caregivers.
With this launch, our care and service providers can now coordinate communication and improve the efficiency and quality of care delivery through a centralized platform. The EHR will continue to evolve, with additional features being added over the next months.
An EHR supports collaborative care
Throughout their care journey at GH-CCMH, clients will work with a care team. As an EHR brings client information together in one place, all involved providers can access and share client data quickly.
“Moving to an EHR allows the care team to interact with one another and have access to assessments and notes at their fingertips,” says Neill Carson, Executive Director. “The clinician will see all the support the client has received so far which allows for better service planning and continuity of care.”
An EHR supports the collection of client and participant sociodemographic data
Offering quality care and services requires knowledge of the populations we are serving. Our EHR will allow the collection of sociodemographic data, including the categories of gender, ethnicity and languages spoken. This data will help us know our clients and participants better and design programs and services with their specific needs in mind.
An EHR supports person-centred care and privacy
With an EHR, clients have a comprehensive and standardized digital health record. This provides a building block for a future client portal where clients can access, manage and share their record. Currently, clients can always request access to their health record and have the right to request changes.
By law it is our obligation to ensure that a client’s health record is private and secure. Our new EHR has been subjected to a thorough third-party privacy assessment and meets SickKids standards of client privacy and data security.
The transition to our EHR will not cause any interruptions to care or services. Starting in May, staff will ask clients to confirm their contact and OHIP information during appointments.
If you have any questions about our new EHR, please contact your clinician or email us at feedback@sickkidscmh.ca.
The Garry Hurvitz Centre for Community Mental Health at SickKids provides a comprehensive range of early intervention and prevention programs, as well as child and family therapy, outreach, and intensive service. The Centre is part of the SickKids mental health continuum of services including psychiatry and the TeleLink Mental Health Program.
If you are looking for our Intensive Services for Children or Intensive Services for Youth , contact Help Ahead, the central point of intake for intensive mental health services for infants, children, youth and their families in Toronto. You may contact them by phone at 1-866-585-6486 or email helpahead@stridestoronto.ca.
To access our Individual and Family Services, please call our Mental Health Access Program at 416-924-1164, ext. 8708 to discuss service options for your family.
For information regarding all Toronto child mental health services, visit Help Ahead.
