North York General Adopts State-of-the-Art Technology to Support Timely Access to Surgeries
Toronto (December 6, 2023) – North York General Hospital (NYGH) is improving wait times for surgeries by introducing advanced technology to manage wait lists that will help clear the surgical backlog caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a provincial leader in wait times for cancer surgeries, NYGH’s new, state-of-the-art surgical e-booking and wait time management system—called Novari Access To Care (ATC)—will automate administrative processes and provide surgeons and their teams with real-time patient data to help provide timely access to surgeries.
“Switching to the Novari ATC system will improve how surgery bookings are managed and prioritized at North York General and contribute to a safe and smooth experience for our patients,” says Dr. Peter Stotland, Interim Chief of Surgery at NYGH. “By providing real-time data, this system will enable us to continuously evaluate and improve our wait time performance.”
Key benefits of Novari ATC include:
- reducing the need to call or fax patient information by allowing messages and change requests to be shared securely between surgeon’s offices and scheduling and pre-operative clinic staff.
- providing real-time tracking of all patients waiting for surgery to easily identify those who should be prioritized because they are approaching provincial wait time targets.
- integration with a patient’s digital medical record at NYGH so care teams can easily see updates related to a planned surgery in one record.
“Introducing advanced technology to help ensure timely access to surgeries is another way North York General is delivering exceptional patient care to our communities,” says Duska Kennedy, Vice President, Strategy, Digital Health and Chief Digital Officer at NYGH. “Through our Digital Health Strategy we are modernizing digital services and infrastructure to support clinicians and improve patients’ quality of life and care experience.”
NYGH is ranked as one of the World’s Best Smart Hospitals 2023 by Newsweek Magazine for adopting advanced technologies for patient care and is the top ranked Smart community hospital in Canada.
Ontario Health also recognizes NYGH as the province’s top performing hospital for cancer surgery wait times from referral to first appointment with a clinician (wait 1), and for meeting provincial performance targets for wait times from decision to surgery (wait 2).
“North York General Hospital has long been an established leader in leveraging digital technologies to efficiently improve care,” says John Sinclair, CPHIMS-CA, President, Novari Health. “It is very rewarding for the team at Novari to have NYGH expand its use of our access to care software platform including tight integration with the Oracle (Cerner) clinical hospital information system.”
Funding for this initiative is provided by the government of Ontario as part of regional investments to support health system recovery and address the surgical backlog caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
North York General Hospital
NYGH is a top-ranked academic community hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto that provides high-quality acute, ambulatory, and long-term care to approximately half a million people across seven sites in one of Toronto’s most diverse and rapidly growing areas. NYGH also treats patients from across the GTA and beyond who are referred to us for specialized care and is the number one community academic hospital in Canada as recognized by Newsweek Magazine for five consecutive years.
Novari Health
Novari Health designs, builds, and implements award-winning enterprise scale solutions that improve access to care, coordination of care, and the delivery of healthcare services. Headquartered in Canada, with offices in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, Novari is one of the fastest growing digital health solution providers. ISO 27001 certified, Novari Health is a Microsoft Partner, with software solutions hosted on Microsoft Azure’s global network of data centres.
For more information, please contact corporate.communications@nygh.on.ca.