Background

Oak Valley Health (OVH) is a leading community healthcare organization in Ontario, providing high-quality, patient-centered care across its two sites in Markham and Uxbridge, as well as the Reactivation Care Centre (RCC). Serving over 468,000 patients annually, OVH offers a range of services including diagnostic and emergency care, acute care medicine and surgery, addictions and mental health programs, and childbirth and children’s services. OVH is also a proud member of the Eastern York Region North Durham Ontario Health Team (OHT). 

The dedicated team includes 542 physicians, 35 midwives, over 3,000 staff, and 1,000 volunteers, all focused on delivering an extraordinary patient experience to the residents of Markham, Whitchurch-Stouffville, and Uxbridge, and beyond, with an “honoured to care” mindset. 

Challenge

For many years, Oak Valley Health has utilized Strata Health’s Resource Matching and Referral (RM&R) solution to facilitate patient referrals and resource matching. However, the existing process for integrating RM&R data into Oak Valley’s data warehouse was highly manual and inefficient. A single team member was responsible for several intricate steps each month: 

  1. Manual Login and Data Retrieval: The process began with manually logging into the RM&R portal and downloading the required reports. This task alone could be time-consuming, particularly if there were connectivity issues or updates required by the portal. 
  2. Data Cleaning: Once the data was downloaded, it needed to be cleaned and prepared for upload. This involved checking for data accuracy, correcting any inconsistencies, and formatting the data to align with our internal database requirements. 
  3. Data Upload: After cleaning the data, the team member manually uploaded it into the Structured Query Language (SQL) server database. This step had to be completed before the fifth day of each month, adding time pressure and the risk of delays if the designated team member was unavailable. 

This entire process introduced a significant bottleneck in the team’s ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) workflow. Reliance on a single individual meant that any absence or delay could jeopardize the availability of crucial data, essential for timely reporting and decision-making. 

Furthermore, the manual nature of the process limited the ability to seamlessly integrate RM&R data with other data sources. This restriction hindered efforts to develop a comprehensive, system-wide perspective, which is vital for making informed decisions. 

Solution

Recognizing the importance of data-informed decision making, both for reporting and for delivering data to data warehouses to create a comprehensive system-wide picture, OVH partnered with Strata Health to automate this process. A secure connection was established between the OVH database server and the RM&R database, creating the necessary database objects to enable direct data consumption. 

Process

Internal discussions about setting up a database connection to RM&R data began at OVH in late January 2024. The OVH RM&R program lead contacted the Strata Health team and confirmed the feasibility. By mid-April, both Strata Health and OVH technology teams began setting up the connections. By mid-May, Beta connection details were used to test the security, connectivity, and compatibility between the two systems. 

Since the RM&R data resides on a Postgres database and the OVH database runs on a SQL server, a custom Postgres ODBC driver was installed to connect to the RM&R data. This technical post was particularly helpful during the setup process. The connection was successfully tested on both Beta and Production servers.  

Results

The automation of this process resulted in a significant reduction of manual hours, but also reduced the amount of time required to complete the ETL process. This not only removed resource bottlenecks but also enabled direct processing access to the RM&R, ensuring users could access data as quickly as possible to make better operational and strategic decisions. 

Testimonials

“Great work everyone! This is going to help us report on RM&R data quite easily going forward. I appreciate your patience working with us through this process and thank you for making this happen. ”  

– Sunny Choi, Manager, Decision Support and Business Intelligence, Oak Valley Health 

“We are thrilled to have collaborated with Oak Valley Health to streamline their data processes. This project underscores the importance of continuously evolving solutions to deliver ongoing value, even years after initial implementation.”

Lester McPherson, National Director – Customer Acquisition, Success & Expansion – Strata Health Canada   

About Our Team

The Decision Support and Business Intelligence teams at Oak Valley Health strive to provide analytical support to all sites and services across our organization. Our team comprises Business Intelligence (BI) developers, data engineers, and business analysts from diverse analytics backgrounds, employing various methods to support our clients. 

The Decision Support (DS) team offers analysis and strategic problem-solving services to clinical programs and administrative departments using data from CIHI databases, Electronic Health Record systems, and other organizational data sources. 

The Business Intelligence (BI) team creates and maintains data marts in the Enterprise Data Warehouse, supporting business analytics needs by developing real-time dashboards and other performance dashboards. 

Contact Us

If you have questions about eReferral solutions or how to leverage data from an eReferral solution, contact Strata Health.