Road to excellence includes engaging patients in their care

When Dr. Dan Flanders opened his pediatric clinic in Toronto in 2010, he embarked on what he says is “a never-ending goal” to continually improve the patient experience.

Since then, Kindercare Pediatrics has grown from a small clinic with two exam rooms to a bustling multi-disciplinary health centre with 25 exam rooms, 25 physicians, two psychologists and 12 allied health practitioners. The clinic has 50,000 patient encounters per year.

With an emphasis on collaborative care, Kindercare Pediatrics has created an environment that supports young patients along their healthcare journey. “We want this to be their medical home,” says Dr. Flanders. “Here, patients can see a primary care doctor as well as other pediatric sub-specialists and allied healthcare providers, have x-rays taken, fill prescriptions and more.” The centre will soon be offering educational programs on nutrition, breastfeeding, and infant and childhood development for parents.

Engagement tools ensure that patient time is quality time.

Always with an eye to improve the healthcare experience, Dr. Flanders decided to employ patient engagement tools to save time at the front desk, improve accuracy of patient charting, and support the delivery of higher quality care.

In 2013, he was the first physician to adopt the Ocean tablet from CognisantMD. In the waiting room, parents use tablets to complete customized forms, update their contact information and provide a detailed patient history – all of which is automatically updated on the patient’s chart in the clinic’s PS Suite EMR from TELUS.

Next came Ocean check-in kiosks, which help to streamline check-in, reduce crowding at the front desk, and keep patient data up-to-date. Patients can review their information, complete intake forms and set their status to “arrived.”

Dr. Flanders also uses Ocean’s library of over 2,000 clinical and administrative forms to gather critical patient information, which is integrated directly into the EMR.

As new Ocean products are made available, they are integrated in the clinic. In fact, Kindercare has become a test environment for new Ocean offerings. Most recently, the clinic was one of the first to adopt Ocean’s new online appointment booking tool. “Instead of patients having to send an email or call reception to make an appointments, they go to an online calendar and select an opening, which then shows up on the EMR as a scheduled appointment. This eliminates a lot of back and forth,” says Dr. Flanders.

A shared pursuit of higher quality care.

“Doctors are under increasing strain. We want to give them tools that help them take better care of themselves and by extension their patients,” says Jeff Kavanagh, President and Co-Founder of CognisantMD. “Our line is continually evolving but the goal is always to digitally connect patients and providers to improve the healthcare experience.”

It is this shared vision for enhancing care and engaging the patient across the healthcare journey that makes Dr. Flanders’ feedback important to Ocean product development.

“Driven by his desire to provide better and better service to his patients, Dr. Flanders has been a perpetual pioneer with us since the beginning.”

Expansion furthers vision.

Even with the tremendous growth of Kindercare Pediatrics in the past decade, there is much more to come.

Kindercare is preparing to double its capacity in the midtown Toronto area over the next 18 months. The ambitious expansion will mean improved access to comprehensive services for families in the area, and will further Dr. Flanders’ on-going vision of making healthcare the first priority at Kindercare.