HC3: from an information repository to a management tool

The Història Clínica Compartida a Catalunya [Shared Healthcare Record in Catalonia] (HC3) is an electronic medical patient’s record that brings together all the relevant documents containing data and information regarding a patient’s progress throughout the healthcare process. Implemented between 2007 and 2009, HC3 provides access in an organized manner -in full compliance with the relevant security and confidentiality guidelines- to the relevant information from the medical histories of the different healthcare centres within the public healthcare system. Thanks to interoperability mechanisms and the use of IT standards, HC3 also ensures that the various medical histories from healthcare centres in the public healthcare network are compatible, in order that all of a patient’s healthcare and health information can be accessed, regardless of when and where it is needed.

The information can be accessed in two ways: either on the centres’ work stations, or via the HC3 interface fro healthcare professionals. According to the results of the 2017 Trends Report survey, 55% of Healthcare Providers gain access to information through the HC3 interface, in addition to uploading HC3 data at their work stations, representing a 5% increase on the previous year. In addition, 70% of Primary Healthcare bodies have a system of data alerts linked to the information uploaded to HC3, meaning healthcare professionals have a thorough overview of the treatment their patients receive.

The results also show that 76% of organisations, including the Emergency Medical Coordinator (SEM), use both PCC (Chronic Patient Complex) and MACA (Advanced Chronic Care Model) on their workstations, making it possible to improve the flow of attention to these patients by supporting the chronic care route between the different providers within the system.

The Integrated Comprehensive Clinical Course has been added to HC3 in order to meet the objectives established in 2017 to obtain all the objective clinical data used for monitoring Primary Care and Specialized Care. This allows for the uploading of patients’ clinical notes and improves coordination between healthcare levels and security in relation to the care they receive. It should be noted that 73% of the organisations include a space for the professional’s subjective observations and the patient’s confidential data.

Finally, 60% of the organisations have suggested that improvements could be made in the following sections: the summary, documents, healthcare data, services and clinical course. These promising results are an incentive to continue improving HC3 since it is constantly becoming more valuable as a management tool for healthcare professionals.

We would like to thank to the Healthcare Department’s eSalut [eHealth] office for their help in writing this article. For further information, please contact us at mapatendencies@ticsalutsocial.cat. More on HC3