Interior Health’s (IH) new MyHealthPortal tool—which allows patients online access to their health records—is being rolled out in the Ashcroft area this week.
MyHealthPortal provides patients with 24-hour access to their health information via their computer, tablet, or pone through a secure portal from Interior Health. Features include the ability to view IH lab results, diagnostic imaging results (such as CT scans, X-rays, and ultrasounds), certain upcoming appointments, recent hospital visit history, and the opportunity to update address and phone number information.
In order to sign up for the service, patients must present to the project team in person with legal photo ID and their Care Card or B.C. Services card, in order to verify their identity. They will be given a login username and password that they will be able to use on their own device.
The project team will be at the Ashcroft and District Hospital and Community Health Care Centre on the following dates:
Monday, October 31: 12:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Tuesday, November 1 to Thursday, November 3: 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Friday, November 4: 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Anyone who is unable to attend in person while the project team is there can enrol remotely by going to the registration desk of the Ashcroft Hospital and submitting an enrolment request.
“We’re really excited about this,” says David Durksen, vice-chair of the local Wellness and Health Action Coalition (WHAC), of the MyHealthPortal tool. “It’s part of our long-term goal of ensuring continuity of care. Patients being able to access their test results is a good first step in providing this continuity. Should we have doctor changes in the future, all these things are in the patient’s control. We don’t have to worry about getting them from a doctor who has left.”
The first site to pilot the new online tool was the Shuswap Lake General Hospital in Salmon Arm in June. Following some tweaking, the tool was then offered in Revelstoke in mid-September, and in the communities of Williams Lake and 100 Mile House at the end of October.
Durksen says that this area was “not as far to the front as we wanted to be” in the rolling-out of the MyHealthPortal tool, but adds that “That’s not necessarily a bad thing with new technology, which isn’t always as easy as some people think.
“It’s one of those next steps we’re really excited about.”