OSCAR EMR Functionality

OSCAR began its development to meet the needs of an academic teaching unit. The following is the current list of functionality in OSCAR which makes it the EMR of choice for teaching centres. For non-teaching clinics, the additional functionality can be switched off if necessary. 

1. General
1. Patient registration for capitation or FFS practices and roster management
2. Scheduling with highly customizable view of provider groups and individualized booking preference
3. Billing also features super-code for smart and simplified billing and third party billing
4. Complete electronic charting of all encounters with an up to date Cumulative Patient Profile (CPP) which provides a 'snapshot view' of important demographics, all active medical problems, medications, allergies, significant past history, family history and social history
5. Patient symptom or issue tagged for each note.
6. Prescription with drug-drug interaction and renal dosage adjustment decision support, personal favorites, patient's pharmacy, drug allergy alerts
7. Real time communication with drug reference library, a social network of trusted colleagues whose postings related to the drugs your patient is taking can be displayed just when you are prescribing these drugs
8. Chronic disease management which maximizes revenue generation through monitoring and alerting of preventative screening and best practice interventions
9. Chronic disease targets that can be modified to each individual patients preference (smoking cessation this year, cholesterol next year)
10. A sophisticated antenatal care record with antenatal care planner
11. Disease Registry is provided to support population health analysis
12. All laboratory results from private laboratories will be imported directly into the EMR
13. Diagnostic imaging results and consultation notes can be scanned into the EMR where required
14. Highly customizable templates that can be created for your clinic
15. A reminder system that can assign tasks to team members and set priority for each task
16. A very easy to use referral system with patient's important information transferred to the referral letter automatically
17. Secure messaging system for communication within the clinic
18. Secure messaging with patients, transfer of patients' record to patients' Personal Health Record system
19. Clinical resource can be accessed at the point of care

2.      Specific teaching modules

a.      Designed to track residents and students clinical activities

b.      Provide note evaluations – SOAP and other formats

c.      Track time taken with patients

d.      Track re-attendance, referral, & investigation rates 

e.      Provide competency reports based on patients seen and procedures logged

f.        To link video footage of the consultation to the electronic record

3.      Teachers assessment module

a.      Ability for teachers to self assess teaching with present objectives for the resident or student for that session

                                                               i.      For example I want to check my teaching of diabetic care – the system prompts the user when a diabetic patient presents reminding the teacher that this was an objective

b.      To set objectives for personal development for teaching

c.      To document teaching activities it is possible to tag encounters as teaching moments

4.      Research Module:

a.      This automatically provide an anonymous version of all EMR  held information that may be used for clinical research. According to PIPEDA act, provincial laws and University ethic policies, any health information may be used for research when there are no possibilities to link information with a singular person.

b.      With such function, researchers can analyze information from EMR after approval by the organizational (local) IRB. Currently, it is legally feasible, but logistically impossible.

c.      EMR provides linkage between visits, prescriptions and investigations related to a given episode of care.

d.      The software provides the possibility to query each professional upon closing the entry of a visit or of a telephone encounter on the link between this encounter and previous problems on the patient's problem list.

5.      CME Module to capture Practice-Based Learning and Improvement:

a.      Linked to mandatory CME requirements of the CFPC this module facilitates reflection on practice and documentation of CME credits for answering clinical questions.

b.      The CME function aims to provide a report at-the-moment-of-need for claiming CME credits. The EMR should automatically record information delivery/retrieval activities from/in the list of AAFP approved databases like Cochrane, Dynamed, FPIN, InfoRetriever, TRIP, Up-to-Date, etc. The list is open to change/add/delete electronic resources. The McGill Information Impact Assessment scale may be completed on-demand after each retrieval activity and is used to register credits. Recorded activities are automatically linked to a summary of the corresponding patient status when appropriate (e.g. to claim M1 credits for reading a POEM received on email & applying it for a specific patient). This retrieval of information links to CME online discussion groups for interaction with peers.

c.      The system automatically tracks searches and actions taken after a search. It then provides reports on similar patient care allowing the doctor to tag that patient’s file with a reminder to alter care at the next visit based on the latest knowledge obtained.