Patients who access imaging through one of the six hospitals operated by Brightshores Health System can now easily view their records.
Medical Imaging Manager Sara Besik explained a new online system, called PocketHealth, offers a secure way to access and share their medical imaging records.
"They're able to view it at their leisure, and send it to their providers where it will be available in a format that is appropriate for their provider to view," Besik pointed out.
Besik revealed that Brightshores conducts over 160,000 medical imaging exams every year across their sites in Grey Bruce.
"What we were doing before was burning these images on a CD and then Purolating them to the destination. And sometimes there can be delays in that way," said Besik. "And what we found were a lot of people don't have CD burners anymore. So once it got there, sometimes that wasn't useful to that physician either."
Besik added the new system is more efficient, and secure.
"So that it's very, very secure with the allowing consent," she stressed. "And once the patient has those images, they can consent to other people or other providers viewing those images and they can also take back that consent."
Besik noted there is a small patient fee to use the program. Users can pay $49 a year for an Unlimited Plan for a family of five.
"You'd have the images from all of those family members, and they can store them forever and share them. They can also upload documents such as lab reports or any other health information that they have if they want to store that there. They can do that on that Unlimited Plan," she explained. "If they need something, just for a one time shot and they want to just pay for one month there is a plan that's called a Flex Plan. It's $10 a month. And so the patient can access, share and store their images for themselves and family, four family members, and they would pay for that month, but they keep the imaging as long as they want, forever."
Patients can apply to PocketHealth for financial assistance. They would receive a code to input and could access their imaging at no cost. Brightshores specialists and physicians can access it for free.
Besik pointed out that PocketHealth is an Ontario Company.
"PocketHealth was actually founded by two young men in Mississauga whose father needed to access to their imaging and they couldn't get it," she recounted. "So they have built this company that was started in Mississauga. So it's really, really nice to be able to support a company that is really homegrown and from our own backyard."
The Medical Imaging department joins together several diverse specialties which produce images in distinct ways using very different methods. Specialties include General Radiography, Gastrics, Angiography, Bone Mineral Densitometry, Computed Tomography, Mammography/Ontario Breast Screening Program, Ultrasound, Nuclear Medicine, and Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
