Consultation on this standard is now closed. Please email consultation@cpsa.ab.ca if you have any questions.
Feedback we received
Under section 1.2b the proposal is written to say that the information from the episodic visit with a new provider must be sent to the patient's primary care provider. There should be an exclusion added to this to allow for a patient too decline this option because sometimes, a patient may not want the information to make its way back to that patient's primary care physician. An easy scenario to imagine is a time when a patient is dissatisfied with the advice or care that he or she is receiving from a primary care physician and is seeking a new doctor or possibly a second opinion from another physician to verify the accuracy of care which is being provided.
In Episodic Care understanding of a patient and documentation is very important for follow up and continuity of care.
Agree with Dr. Campbell. We had this same conversation a few years ago with our local PCN, who demanded communication with the family physicians from the episodic care and ultimately made the funding dependent on this communication.
MANY patients attend walk-in/episodic care because they do NOT want to see their family physician for either privacy reasons, for second opinions or they do not trust their opinions. While communicating with the patient's family physician is sometimes helpful for continuity of care, the feedback may be negatively received, and ultimately it is up to the patient, not us or the CPSA to dictate where a patient's private medical information is shared.
Although applicable to consultants, if the patient declines to have me share my walk-in clinic or ER encounter record with their primary care provider, I'm not sure that a requirement that I must "inform the primary care provider when information has been withheld" makes sense? Presumably the patient doesn't want their regular doc to know they saw me instead? I wonder if that could end up in court - perhaps CPSA legal counsel should take a second look at it?
It might also save future headaches to look into how such information flows are structured within Connect Care (e.g. ER notes automatically routing to docs, After-Visit Summaries and other information automatically routing to patient portals), to help align this CPSA standard with those mechanics, if possible, rather than having to change one or the other shortly?