Calgary, September 12th, 2007: Strata Health has passed a major milestone towards the Q4 launch of PathWays Referral™ for Mental Health & Addictions (MH&A) with a successful demonstration of the software. This ambitious project uses web technology to improve access to services for those in need, while reducing repeated MH&A presentations to hospital emergency departments.

Strata Health Solutions and its clinical partner, the Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA), have teamed with Canada Health Infoway and Cerner Corporation to develop unique technology to accelerate the matching and placement of at-risk mental health clients to clinical and community resources.

Within VIHA’s acute environment, PathWays Referral™ will be integrated with an innovative EHR-based MH&A clinical profile being pioneered by VIHA through a bi-directional interface with the Cerner clinical enterprise software. The new PathWays Referral™ module will intelligently match assessed client need with the complete array of mental health and addictions resources and programs – all in real time!

“Mental health and addictions disease has emerged as a significant and growing management issue for patients, their families and our institutions internationally,” comments Strata Health founder and CEO, Don Schick. MH&A services are largely community based, and clinicians have just not had access to program availability when a client presents at the ED. PathWays Referral™ will change all that by:

  • providing a geographically filtered list of available programs
  • using clinician defined algorithms to determine eligibility to specific programs
  • allowing service providers to quickly pull appropriate clients into their programs
  • providing functionality for lateral referrals to an alternate program, thereby
  • reducing client wait time for admission into an appropriate or modified program
  • showing real time statistics on expected wait times per program based on current data
    recording patient movement, and service provider resource utilization
    On their website, Infoway’s President and CEO, Richard Alvarez, is quoted describing the project as ” … a remarkable example of electronic tools supporting the needs of patients … This innovative solution will help reduce wait times and lead to more appropriate care and could serve as a model for other jurisdictions across the country”.

Since 2001, Strata Health has successfully pioneered the use of web-based software to accelerate delivery of chosen community care for patients discharging from hospital. The PathWays Referral™ module will expand the PathWays software suite within existing and new clients to support MH&A programs, as well as other community and acute programs that do not necessarily have a fixed capacity.