Orillia, Ontario
Couchiching Family Health Team is a primary care team serving patients in Orillia and the surrounding area.
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Type
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Family Health Team
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EMR
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PS Suite
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Using Ocean Since
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March 2016
Couchiching Family Health Team serves more than 7,500 patients in Orillia and the surrounding area. To strengthen chronic disease prevention and management, the team needed a more consistent way to update patient smoking status, identify people at risk for COPD, and support smoking cessation without adding pressure to already-busy staff.
Smoking status in the cumulative patient profile was often out of date, screening opportunities were missed, and the clinic was not capturing all eligible counselling billing opportunities.
The team also needed to be realistic about capacity. Asking nurses or administrative staff to add another manual screening process was not sustainable.
Couchiching Family Health Team introduced an automated, patient-led workflow using Ocean Tablets in the waiting room. Patients could confirm contact information, provide email consent, and answer a simple smoking-status question before the appointment.
Based on the patient's response, Ocean guided them to the next appropriate step, including smoking cessation information or COPD-related screening forms. The process helped the clinic collect better information before the visit while keeping staff out of repetitive intake work.
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Every patient over 14 receives a touchscreen tablet in the waiting room to review their contact information, complete an email consent form, and answer a simple question about smoking habits.
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Based on a patient’s response, the tablet invites them to the smoking cessation program, and displays the Canadian Lung Health Test (CLHT), and MRC Dyspnea forms.
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Responses are automatically collected and synced directly into the EMR, allowing for a non-intrusive method of data collection without adding additional work for staff.
Patients could answer sensitive smoking-related questions privately and without judgement. The tablet-based approach helped open conversations that some patients may not have raised during the visit on their own.
Patient-facing impact
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More than 3,000 patients were screened. From these patients, the Canadian Lung Health Test was administered to 1,300 patients, compared to 45 in the previous year.
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Approximately 500 patients at risk for COPD were identified through positive CLHT screening and given additional smoking cessation information.
Staff and clinic impact
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Time savings
Staff spent less time collecting demographic updates, email consent, and paper forms.
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Physicians had more complete patient information available in the chart before each visit.
The early results gave Couchiching Family Health Team a model they could extend to other chronic disease priorities. The team planned to use tablet-based workflows to support diabetes programming, depression screening, and suicidal ideation screening.
