Health P.E.I. hopes to roll out an 'optimized' patient registry this spring, CEO says

People waiting to be assigned a family doctor or nurse practitioner on Prince Edward Island can expect an "optimized" version of the province's patient registry in the spring, the CEO of Health P.E.I. says.

The department wants the new version of the tool to include more detailed information about where people stand on the list and when they can hope to be placed with a health-care provider, Melanie Fraser told Louise Martin of CBC's Compass Wednesday.

"The tool itself wasn't optimized to be able to provide that level of detail," Fraser said.

Fraser, the former Ontario associate deputy minister of health, was appointed to her current role in February. Under her watch, Health P.E.I. has been busy removing thousands of what Fraser termed "erroneous" entries from the list.

Although the patient registry needed a "significant amount of work," Fraser said the province has made progress cleaning the data in a "labour-intensive" manual process.

Thousands of names removed

The patient registry was launched in 2000 with 500 names on it. Those on the list included people who had no family doctor to manage their care, as well as those who wanted to change family doctors for some reason.

Changes are coming to P.E.I.'s patient registry. What will they mean if you're waiting for a doctor?

1 month ago

Duration 7:06

Health P.E.I. CEO Melanie Fraser is overseeing some shifts in how people will get medical care on the Island. She says medical homes and neighbourhoods are becoming easier to set up, the number of steps involved in recruiting doctors has been slashed — and some changes are coming to how P.E.I.'s patient registry will work.

In early July, that total sat at 38,623 before thousands of names were removed as part of the province's ongoing cleanup efforts. 

Of the more than 3,500 names pulled off the list, 745 were Island residents who had been newly assigned to a care provider. The bulk of the other removals were temporary foreign workers, who should not have been added in the first place, but some were taken off because they had moved out of province or died.

As of Wednesday, the list contained 34,975 registered applicants.

Although the province is searching for a new data platform to "underpin" the list, Fraser said efforts to clean it up are already bearing fruit.

For instance, more-accurate information helps Health P.E.I. plan patient medical homes, a health-care model where family physicians work in teams with other health-care professionals such as dietitians and social workers.

"So as we're building our patient medical homes; we're putting the right quantity in the right spot with the right staff," Fraser said.

Physician recruitment streamlined

Physician recruitment and retention are also key to helping match names on the list with family doctors or nurse practitioners, Fraser said.

"The better we get at recruitment, the better we get at retention, the better access we can deliver," she said.

As part of those efforts, she said the province is drastically simplifying its recruitment process, moving from a system with 49 steps to recruit a physician to one with just 11 steps.

"We've made progress, and I'm really proud of the progress the team has made in 16 short weeks," Fraser said. "But there's a lot more to go."