Alberta Health Services (AHS) completed its largest launch of Connect Care to date, involving more than 25,000 healthcare workers at 135 facilities. .“Expanding Connect Care is an important step in healthcare in this province and provides us with a central access point for patient information across AHS,” said AHS Interim President and CEO Mauro Chies in a Sunday press release. .“Eventually, health information will be accessible from any AHS location in the province, giving healthcare teams a more complete health history for patients, access to consistent information on best practices, and resources at their fingertips while maintaining the privacy of their information.”.Connect Care provides standardized care across AHS and enables all health records to be accessed in an online information system. It provides physicians with common decision-making support. .The release said this expansion is the first to involve sites and programs in all five AHS zones. It said the launch involved acute and long-term care sites in the Calgary, North, and Central AHS zones; Cancer Care Alberta; and Alberta Kidney Care. .“The Connect Care system improves the ability to manage medical records, which benefits not just our front-line healthcare providers, but allows patients to play a greater role in their care,” said Alberta Health Minister Jason Copping..The release said people who have visited a site where Connect Care is available can sign up to MyAHS Connect, an online patient portal where people can see their health information, test results and medications. It said there are about 75,000 healthcare workers using Connect Care across Alberta. .“Connect Care ensures all physicians, front-line staff and other care providers have access to the same clinical standards and best healthcare practices, and can provide high-quality care the same way, no matter where you are in Alberta,” said AHS Vice President, Quality and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Francois Belanger. .“We had safeguards and protocols in place to protect patients during launch, ensuring the care we provide is never compromised, including our standard practice of reducing some surgical activity at our launching sites for the transition period.”.There are nine Connect Care launches, which started in 2019 and will continue to the final implementation in fall 2024. The release said when fully implemented, 150,000 staff will be using it at 682 sites. .The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) released a report about the growing threat of digital ID technologies such as Connect Care in Canada in August. .READ MORE: Justice Centre warns about dangers of digital IDs in Canada.“What Canadians need today is not more unmitigated government access to private information, but instead a renewed commitment to Charter rights and freedoms,” said JCCF President John Carpay. .“We are on the road to Beijing, and Canadians should be apprehensive.”
