chickenfeet

10 years ago I spent the best part of a year helping develop IT strategies designed to reduce the burden of cancer in Ontario.  This morning I read the most recent Annual Report from Cancer Care Ontario and the Ontario Cancer Plan 2008-11.  What's really depressing is that the problems are still the same and the barriers to change are still the same.  It's not that there hasn't been progress.  There has, but it'd almost entirely clinical; better treatments leading to improved survival rates.  The big issue continues to be the lack of integration across the continuum of care and the problems that creates.  It's hard not to get the feeling that, although the psychosocial problems caused by fragmented care are well understood, they really aren't considered as important as 'real' medicine.  The big inhibitor to better integration remains the woeful lack of IT provision in primary care.  Only 8% of Canadian family doctors are using an electronic medical record system.  That compares to 87% in New Zealand and 83% in the UK.  This results in our rate of sending out screening reminders being 28% vs. New Zealand's 98%.  All in all it's a depressing way to spend a morning.