Healthcare Technology Featured Article

March 04, 2014

Wheelings & Dealings: TELUS Increases EMR Presence with Acquisition of Med Access Inc.


Electronic medical record (EMR) has, for the most part, replaced traditional medical record keeping in many healthcare facilities across North America. This technology has introduced a level of efficiency into the healthcare industry that, according to some estimates, will save up to $100 billion or more annually for the bloated healthcare infrastructure in the United States.

While Canada may have a different policy approach to healthcare than the United States, it still uses the same technology to make such care as efficient as possible. TELUS Health, provider of tele-homecare, electronic medical and health records, consumer health, benefits management and pharmacy management solutions, has recently increased its presence in the country by acquiring Med Access Inc. and its EMR business in Canada.

This acquisition gives TELUS Health the largest footprint in Canada's EMR market, expanding its reach to 12,500 Canadian physicians and medical specialists supporting more than 45 million patients annually. This includes the addition of Med Access and its 2,000 specialty and general practice physicians in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario.

TELUS Health now owns 100 percent of Med Access and its technology, including an industry-recognized eReferral platform that operates across all its EMR solutions, which will be now integrated into TELUS services.

"The eReferral platform offers healthcare teams the opportunity to develop a new continuity of care strategy by allowing them to electronically forward any information in a patient's chart directly to another care provider, thereby reducing potential data entry errors and helping to enhance patient care," said Brendan Byrne, vice-president, TELUS physician solutions.

TELUS EMR is designed to provide healthcare providers with:

  • Enhanced patient care
  • A comprehensive electronic medical summary with the ability to retrieve information from a single secure location at a glance
  • Less time spent searching and accessing complete patient history and latest diagnostic results
  • Interactive chronic disease management
  • Specialist workflow optimization  with better collaboration options
  • Centralized medical data with unified connectivity, allowing for easy collaboration and sharing of information
  • Secure clinical data

This latest acquisition is part of TELUS' larger agenda to continue innovating and expanding its market share in the healthcare technology and development industry. In the past six years, the company has invested more than $1 billion in the acquisitions of EMR providers Wolf Medical Systems in Western Canada, PS Suite in Ontario and KinLogix in Quebec.




Edited by Blaise McNamee
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