Alberta Health Services launches Connect Care in Claresholm

By Rob Vogt, Local Press Writer
Alberta Health Services has launched Connect Care, a new provincial clinical health information system, in Claresholm and 56 other sites in the Calgary and Edmonton areas.
The change-over occurred on May 28, in the early morning, at 5 a.m.
Alberta Health Services announced Connect Care is a new way of using and sharing health information to improve patient care wherever Alberta Health Services, its subsidiaries and partners provide care. Eventually, a patient’s Alberta Health Services health information will be accessible from any Alberta Health Services location in the province supporting the patient through their care journey.
Connect Care will give health-care teams a more complete picture of their patients’ health history, provide resources at a health-care provider’s fingertips with access to consistent clinical information and best practices, and will allow health-care teams to communicate with their patients and each other more easily.
This was Launch 4 which involved the Alberta Children’s Hospital and Peter Lougheed Centre in Calgary Zone. Also in Launch 4 are Calgary Zone rural and urgent care sites (including Claresholm) and the clinics and services aligned with them, the Southern Alberta Forensic Psychiatric Centre, Central Production Pharmacy, addiction and mental health facilities in the Edmonton Zone, plus all Alberta Health Services labs in the Edmonton Zone that have not already implemented Connect Care.
If Albertans have visited a site where Connect Care is in place, they can sign up for access to MyAHS Connect, Connect Care’s online patient portal, to see their health information, test results and medications; manage appointments; and communicate securely with their health-care team.
With Launch 4 there are now more than 50,000 staff, physicians and other health-care providers using Connect Care to provide care for patients in North, Edmonton, and Calgary zones. There are also more than 100,000 patients using the MyAHS Connect patient portal into Connect Care to manage their health.
There are nine Connect Care launches, which started November 2019 and will continue to the final implementation in fall 2024. When fully in place, 150,000 staff and physicians will be using Connect Care at 682 sites across Alberta.