TORONTO — Ontario is planning to create a provincewide electronic medical record system for primary care, more than two decades after the government first embarked on what became a scandal-plagued eHealth project.
Health Minister Sylvia Jones is announcing today that the province is starting a new process, conducting a market sounding exercise to better understand what digital solutions are out there and establishing a vendor of record.
Government officials say most primary care providers are already using electronic records, but their systems are isolated.
Those officials won't say what the cost estimate is ahead of the market sounding exercise.
Ontario began trying to create integrated electronic medical records for patients in the early 2000s, but in 2009 the then-Liberal health minister was forced to resign after the auditor general said the eHealth agency had spent $1 billion but had little to show for it.
Jones is also announcing that next week's provincial budget will include another $325 million for primary care, as she says the government is so far on track toward its goal of attaching everyone in the province to a primary care provider by 2029.