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HRM Experience Improvement Task Force

Since 2013, Health Report Manager (HRM®) has been an indispensible tool for clinicians to manage patient information coming from hospitals and specialty clinics. It has been an improvement over paper report delivery. Like all technologies, HRM needs to work with its partners to make improvements so clinicians can continue to manage patient data from the reports and keep patients safe. HRM is a report delivery technology. It delivers reports that hospitals prepare using their own systems and report formatting. OntarioMD is commited to working with all sites that send reports through HRM and established a Task Force in March 2022 to understand and address challenges with reports experienced by community-based clinicians who use HRM. The work of the Task Force is anticipated to end during winter 2023.  

HRM Task Force Word Cloud inluding increase in PDF reports, fax duplicates, lengthy reports, multiple locations,

Check this page regularly for the latest updates on the work of the Task Force.


What the Task Force is doing: 

  • Making recommendations for standards to be used by sending facilities (e.g., hospitals) and EMR vendors to provide clinicians with a consistent experience. 
  • Developing an execution plan with tactics to encourage adoption of the standards by hospitals and EMR vendors.
  • Engaging health system partners (e.g., Ontario Health, CPSO, OHA, etc.) to support these efforts. 

Results so far:

Through the Task Force's advocacy, hospitals in the Central East region and Trillium Health Partners have implemented solutions that exist within their Hospital Information System (HIS) or were custom built to stop duplicate faxes for HRM users.  The suppression of these faxes will reduce the administrative burden on primary care providers.

The work of the Task Force is anticipated to end in early winter. Further updates will be published when they are available. 

Primary care concerns addressed by the Task Force: 

ConcernImpact on Clinicians
1. High volume of reports, not all clinically significant
2. Duplicate reports (fax, draft and final duplicates)
Inbox flooded, adds to burnout, risk of missing something important affecting patient safety
3. PDF reportsHard to find data quickly, not searchable by EMRs, hard to use for Ql or research, more clicks added to workflow
4. Specificity in categories of reportsHard to find data quickly, risk of mislabeling reports
5. Lengthy reportsHard to find data quickly, adds to burnout, risk ofHard to find data quickly, adds to burnout, risk of missing something important affecting patient safety
6. Receiving locationBarrier to adoption, complexities, for users who work in different locations

Task Force Sub-Groups 

The HRM Task Force is made up of clinicians, Chief Medical Information Officers (CMIOs), representatives from Ontario Health, EMR vendors, Hospital Information System (HIS) vendors, and OMD's HRM and executive teams. The HRM Task Force has three sub-groups:

Advisory Circle:

  • Steers, influences and champions recommendations
  • Influences stakeholders to execute recommendations
  • Provides oversight of Task Force activities
  • Governance: Reviews, provides feedback and approves deliverables

Sending Facilities (SF) Standards Working Group:

  • Provides input to Current State Assessment, including prioritizing key issues
  • Provides input and recommendations for SF Standards document
  • Reviews execution plan

EMR Usability Working Group:

  • Reviews Current State Assessment findings
  • Makes recommendations for EMR usability improvements
  • Reviews execution plan

Timeline Key Avtivities showing June 2022 to May 2023


Advisory Circle Meetings: 

  • March 30, 2022
  • May 5, 2022
  • May 25, 2022
  • June 29, 2022
  • August 25, 2022
  • November 9, 2022
  • February 14, 2023

SF Standards Meetings:

  • April 13, 2022
  • May 30, 2022
  • November 2, 2022
  • December 12, 2022
  • January 12, 2023
  • February 27, 2023

EMR Usability Meetings:

  • June 23, 2022
  • August 31, 2022
  • November 8, 2022