Epic for Community Partners
On November 30, 2024, Unity Health Toronto will be launching a new network-wide electronic patient record (EPR) system. This new EPR system will enable an integrated health care system at Unity Health, so that our team of physicians, staff and learners can work more closely together and share information more seamlessly. This will help to ensure that each patient receives the best possible care experience on their health care journey.
Are you a community partner? Please see below for important information on planned downtimes during the go-live period; Epic Care Link, our new web-based portal for partners and MyChart, powered by Epic, our new online patient portal.
Are you a patient or caregiver? Sign up for MyChart or learn how our EPR system impacts you.
Temporary downtime: November 30, 2024 through December 2, 2024
From midnight (12 a.m.) on November 30 to 9 a.m. on December 2, Unity Health will not be contributing data to external or provincial services such as Ontario Health’s ConnectingOntario and OntarioMD Health Report Manager (HRM), while we validate the new EPR system.
During this downtime, all critical results will be directly communicated by Unity Health staff via manual routing channels (e.g. call, email, urgent fax) to ensure that family physicians are informed of critical patient test results in a timely manner. The distribution of routine patient test results will resume once the downtime has ended, and any non-critical backlog of information from the downtime will come in by 9 a.m. on December 2.
Changes to routing processes
When your patients receive care at St. Joseph’s Health Centre, St. Michael’s Hospital or Providence Healthcare, you will notice some differences in the clinical documentation (notes, results, letters) from Unity Health:
- Automatically distributed notes and results – upon finalization of a note or result, content will be automatically distributed from the EPR to the relevant recipient(s), such as a referring provider and/or Primary Care Provider, rather than manually sent.
- Communication method – all providers who are subscribed to OntarioMD HRM should no longer receive duplicate communications via other methods (fax, mail). We hope this reduces duplicate communications as recommended by the OntarioMD’s HRM Task Force. There are certain communications that are not eligible for routing via HRM, and these will continue to be distributed via fax or mail for providers external to Unity Health.
- Formatting differences – reports distributed from the new EPR may have differences in font size, header format, report order, or other minor stylistic details.
No action is required on your part, unless you wish to update your communication preferences (HRM, fax, mail) for Unity Health Toronto results/notes routing. If you do wish to update, please contact:
- St. Joseph’s Health Centre – HealthRecords.sjhc@unityhealth.to
- St. Michael’s Hospital – Health.Records@unityhealth.to
- Providence Healthcare – healthrecordsPHC@unityhealth.to
If you wish to update your subscription status with HRM, please contact OntarioMD at support@ontariomd.com. Changes will be reflected within 10 business days.
Epic Care Link
Epic Care Link is a secure web-based portal that gives community partners select access to Unity Health’s patient database and functionalities that will help to improve continuity of care. This portal provides many benefits for community physicians and Unity Health patients, including:
- More transparent information exchange between physicians
- Improved referral processes for external physicians
- Allows Unity Health staff and physicians to send releases of information electronically to community partners
- Enables community clinics to review patients’ charts for coding and following up on claims
- Allows for coordination of social services outside of Unity Health
Epic Care Link launches at Unity Health on November 30, 2024. Are you a staff or physician at one of our partner organizations? Sign up for Epic Care Link.
Frequently asked questions
Users of Epic Care Link can include community partners who work with Unity Health to serve the community, such as:
- Physicians
- Clinical Staff
- Non-clinical staff / Front Desk
- Release of Information (ROI) Requestors
- Research Monitors
- Specimen Collectors
- Patient Access and Look Up
- Be granted access to patients based on established clinical relationship
- Look up patients and access charts upon providing sufficient demographic information about the patient
- In Basket communication with Unity Health staff and physicians
- Send and receive messages about patient care and billing needs
- Directly link messages to patients’ accounts, charts, lab results and orders
- Receive email notifications for their patients based on notable events (e.g. admission/discharge from emergency departments).
- Place orders directly to Unity Health sites
- Includes lab, imaging, cardiology and referral orders
- Specimen Collection
- To be documented in Epic Care Link and resulted at Unity Health
- Reporting
- Access to select Epic Care Link Reporting Tools
- User Provisioning
- Manage and add user accounts for your organization
Once you’ve submitted your application on Unity Health’s website, you will receive a confirmation email within one hour. You will receive access to Epic Care Link on Nov. 30, 2024.
Training on Epic Care Link will be available for users upon log in.
Support is available during business hours, Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Email: epiccarelink@unityhealth.to.
There are no fees associated with using Epic Care Link.
Access to the internet using a commercial browser such as Chrome (recommended) or Safari. The use of Internet Explorer is discouraged.
Epic Care Link provides referring physicians with access to their patients’ medical records for 90 days following a physician consultation, labs or imaging tests, outpatient visits or hospitalization at St. Michael’s Hospital, St. Joseph’s Health Centre and Providence Healthcare.
New patient portal: MyChart, powered by Epic
MyChart, powered by Epic, is Unity Health’s new secure patient portal that gives patients access to their health information anytime from a smartphone, tablet or computer. MyChart will be launching in tandem with our new EPR system on November 30, 2024.
MyChart is a free tool that will allow patients to access notes and summaries about their care and view lab and test results from Unity Health’s hospitals. With the new portal, your patients may be able to access their diagnostic reports, including lab, radiology and procedure results, from Unity Health faster than before.
For more information about the new patient portal, please visit www.unityhealth.to/MyChart
Last updated November 14, 2024