Evidence of meeting #29 for Health in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was infoway.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Burton Bailey Conservative Red Deer, AB
Thank you, sir. I'm requesting you to submit those to the clerk for us.
Did Telus collect any of the 20-cent e-prescription service fee? If so, what was done with it?
Vice-President, Provider Solutions, Telus Health
That was equivalent across all participating vendors. It had nothing to do with Telus in particular.
As I said, the Telus Health Exchange with the PrescribeIT platform on board had several different EMR and pharmacy providers. The dollar figures were distributed in accordance to Infoway's agreements that they've signed with these vendors across the country.
Conservative
Burton Bailey Conservative Red Deer, AB
If I'm doing math quickly in my head, it costs about 50¢ per prescription, which Telus would have received. Is that what the basic cost was? Am I correct?
Vice-President, Provider Solutions, Telus Health
Given the 180 million transactions, that sounds about right.
Conservative
Burton Bailey Conservative Red Deer, AB
Did Telus provide any input to the federal government on introducing the 20¢ per prescription fee?
Vice-President, Provider Solutions, Telus Health
We did not. That was part of the Infoway process.
Conservative
Burton Bailey Conservative Red Deer, AB
In your 2022 Competition Bureau submission, Telus identified EMR and PMS integration barriers as the main reason for low adoption. What concrete steps did Telus take to fix them? Why did the barriers persist until shutdown?
Vice-President, Provider Solutions, Telus Health
As part of this process and the establishment of our clinical advisory board and committee, we helped Canada Health Infoway with a “boots on the ground” understanding of some of these challenges you're referring to. This was part of the incremental development that was then provided by Infoway to all vendors, not only to Telus.
Whether they took all of our recommendations was completely up to them as the program operator responsible for onboarding and recruitment of clinicians.
Conservative
Burton Bailey Conservative Red Deer, AB
I'm going to close with this. Telus is getting into many health care areas. You mentioned connected care. I believe that you were referring to Senate Bill S-5, not the Connect Care in Alberta. Is that correct?
Conservative
Burton Bailey Conservative Red Deer, AB
Okay. I was a little confused when you used that term, because it's my understanding that Connect Care from Alberta was developed in the United States. You are integrating with it in certain areas in Alberta, but you are not part of Connect Care in Alberta.
Vice-President, Provider Solutions, Telus Health
I spoke to Bill S-5, the connected care for Canadians act.
Conservative
Burton Bailey Conservative Red Deer, AB
I'm sorry, Chair, but I'm really having trouble hearing his answers with these breaks.
Can you repeat the answer, please?
Vice-President, Provider Solutions, Telus Health
I was referring to Bill S-5, the connected care for Canadians act.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much.
I will now go to Ms. Chi for the Liberals.
You have five minutes, please, Ms. Chi.
Liberal
Maggie Chi Liberal Don Valley North, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the witness for appearing today.
My first question is about when you first developed the system. You mentioned that Telus Health started developing the system even before PrescribeIT won the bid for e-prescriptions.
I understand there's an issue with protecting IP. Without compromising that, can you explain the full scope of work involved in developing and building the system? Whom did you consult when you first built the system? Did you consult with pharmacists or clinicians? Was it a fulsome consideration across various professions?
Vice-President, Provider Solutions, Telus Health
Even back then, we realized that connecting care and basically bridging the gap of data silos were going to be important for the future. Given Telus's footprint with pharmacies, EMRs and even some hospital-based solutions in Quebec, we recognized that this would be a critical infrastructure to provide connectivity.
This program started by looking at e-prescribing, but it was not limited to this particular service. As we know, clinical communication is also of high value. The goal was really to look at how it can reduce inefficiencies for the health care ecosystem, particularly attacking the fax situation, which still plagues our system quite significantly.
The ability to digitize a lot of these paper-based interactions was our answer, when we started developing the Telus Health Exchange. The opportunity with Infoway came around 2017, when they required the exclusive use of our technology, and we provided this as part of our agreement.
Liberal
Maggie Chi Liberal Don Valley North, ON
Thank you.
On the uptake, it was mentioned that the uptake was low. What is your take on the cause of that? Was it because of the performance of the product or the functionality itself, and what did you do? I understand that from the start of the program, there were many changes, change orders, as part of the process, based on the feedback from pharmacists and physicians. What is your take on why the uptake was so low?
Vice-President, Provider Solutions, Telus Health
It's really important to separate the roles and responsibilities.
Our goal was really to provide a highly scalable, highly performing, very secure platform that allows us to connect multiple different systems in multiple different jurisdictions and process millions of transactions.
In relation to adoption objectives, these were primarily or exclusively driven by Canada Health Infoway with regard to provincial onboarding activities, signing of the agreements and vendor onboarding. When I say “vendor”, I'm talking about EMR pharmacy vendors—
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC
Madam Chair, there is no more interpretation.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
We're having trouble with interpretation again.
I will suspend at this time.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Let's try again and see what happens.
Continue with your question, Ms. Chi, and let's get some feedback.
Liberal
Maggie Chi Liberal Don Valley North, ON
Yes.
Probably the last bit didn't have interpretation, so perhaps you can repeat a bit of what you said.
Vice-President, Provider Solutions, Telus Health
Yes, of course.
I was mentioning that we started down this journey and were looking at market trends with regard to the Telus Health exchange when we were building it, prior to being engaged with Canada Health Infoway. There was a recognition that in order to reduce reliance on antiquated technologies, such as the fax, and given the footprint that Telus Health had in terms of pharmacies and electronic medical records, there needed to be something put in place to address this critical issue that is still plaguing our health care ecosystem to this day. That's why we started down this path.
We definitely consulted with both pharmacists and clinicians. We also have medical directors as part of our own staff who supported this development. In 2017, we won the competitive bid for the e-prescribing service, which required exclusive use of the platform in order to deliver the service to Canada Health Infoway, and we've been providing that service since then.