It usually takes about eight minutes to drive from Creighton, Sask. to Flin Flon, Man., but the journey for electronic medical records between the two provinces isn’t nearly as quick.For one Creighton resident, it was life-threatening. Creighton, a northeastern Saskatchewan town of about 1,200 people about 430 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon, has no hospital. But for Creighton residents, the choice is seemingly obvious: access health care in Saskatchewan by driving at least 350 kilometres south to the closest hospital in Nipawin, or simply walk across the border to Flin Flon General Hospital in Manitoba.Frances Garinger, a 78-year-old Creighton resident, regularly chose the latter.Garinger had open heart surgery in 2011, then was put on a regular dose of blood thinners, regulated by her weekly International Normalized Ratio (INR) tests, typically carried out at Flin Flon General Hospital. Garinger’s INR test results on Oct. 27 didn’t get to her Saskatoon-based family doctor until it was too late. She suffered a stroke on Nov. 4.Her daughter, Kimberley Sautner, said her INR levels were lower than they were supposed to be. She said the stroke could have been prevented if the two provinces relayed medical information more efficiently.“My mom is waiting until she gets a phone call to find out, to see if her INR level is where it needs to be, for any adjustments that need to be made,” Sautner said. “Sadly, when my mother had her blood work done on Oct. 27, she didn’t get a call immediately, and eight days later, she had a massive stroke.”Kimberley Sautner (middle) and her mother, Frances Garringer (bottom left), with their family. (Submitted by Kimberley Sautner)Manitoba’s Personal Health Information Act gives patients the right to access their own personal health information. If a patient is seeking a copy of medical records from a health-care facility, they must make their request for access directly to that facility. Manitoba doesn’t have a central location where all of a person’s medical records are kept, according to the province.Sautner said Flin Flon General Hospital would have to routinely fax Garinger’s reports to her doctor in Saskatoon, which would take days.“This is no fault of a doctor. This is no fault of the hospital, but I clearly believe that it’s the break in the medical system when it comes to the government and the sharing of important information,” she said.West of the border, in Saskatchewan, medical records for registered residents are uploaded to eHealth, which, according to the province, collects, combines, stores and manages electronic health records.According to the Saskatchewan Health Authority, when electronic records can’t be exchanged, hard copies of patient records are provided so the patient can share their health information with health-care service providers in neighbouring provinces.Creighton Mayor Bruce Fiddler said the town only has one public health nurse, stationed at the town’s only health office.“We go to Flin Flon, which is in Manitoba, for that [health-care] service. It’s been like that forever,” he said.Canada Health Infoway, a government funded organization that is working on a connected cross-country health-care system, reported that fewer than 40 per cent of Canadians accessed some of their health information electronically and only 29 per cent of physicians shared patient information outside their practices in 2024. The Canadian Institute for Health Information, a non-profit organization, is working on Connected Care — a system it says could help create a more coordinated, data-driven health approach where accurate information flows securely and easily between care providers.Ann Chapman, director of Connected Care at CIHI, said Canada’s health data lacks standardization and connectivity. “Picture this: health care in Canada is full of islands, so that patient information is captured in separate systems … and those systems do not talk to one another,” she said. “This has the potential for patients to suffer and for clinicians to carry the weight of making those decisions when they don’t have all the information in front of them.”Last summer, then-federal Health Minister Mark Holland put forward Bill C-72, the Connected Care for Canadians Act.It would have allowed patients to securely access their personal health information and allow health-care providers to share it, for example between specialists at hospitals and doctors or pharmacists working in the community.It also would have required technology companies to make their health information software compatible with other companies’ software.”Data saves lives and it’s time for us to move past the archaic and siloed approach to managing and sharing patient information,” Holland said when he introduced Bill C-72. Since Parliament was prorogued before the bill passed, it has technically been thrown out. The bill has not been reintroduced since. Ann Chapman, director of Connected Care at the Canadian Institute for Health Information, says Canada’s health data lacks standardization and connectivity. (Shlok Talati/CBC)Chapman said many health-care advocates across the country, including CIHI, are hoping for Bill C-72 to be introduced again under the Carney government.”It really was a landmark piece of federal legislation that was really working towards enabling that health information to move, to be shared,” Chapman said.In an emailed statement, Health Canada said in some cases, provinces and territories go beyond the requirements of the Canada Health Act by entering into bilateral agreements to allow residents to access emergency or specialized care that is not available in their home province.Given that the provision of health-care services falls under provincial and territorial jurisdiction, these agreements are negotiated and signed directly by the provinces concerned, the statement said.Chapman said there have been multiple attempts over the last decade to make strides into data-sharing that might come into fruition in the next five years.”We can’t in Canada just do one switch and all of a sudden it’s all going to work. But we have such huge enablers that are taking place right now in this country that we have not had in the past. That means that we are making progress towards this.”At the provincial level, the Saskatchewan Health Authority said in an emailed response that the province understands that the differences between systems can create challenges for patients and health-care providers.“Health information, privacy and digital health staff from both provinces are currently working together to identify opportunities to reduce these types of occurrences,” the SHA’s statement said.It’s unclear when those solutions might come into force.Fiddler said he remains hopeful.“It can become cumbersome,” he said. “I know the provinces are working together on a number of issues and so maybe this will be one that will be resolved, but at the present time, that’s the way it is, so we deal with it.”LISTEN | Creighton resident says mother’s heart stroke was preventable if provinces shared medical information better :The 30611:10Creighton resident says mother’s heart stroke was preventable if provinces shared medical information betterKimberley Sautner, Creighton resident, talks about her mother’s heart stroke that she says could’ve been preventable if Manitoba and Saskatchewan shared medical information more efficiently.Garinger continues her recovery in Flin Flon. Sautner said the left side of her mother’s body remains paralyzed and she sleeps for 16 to 18 hours a day, waking for 15 minutes at a time.It’s a long road to recovery for her mother, she said. “We live in Canada. We have free health care, so the sharing of important information, such as my mom’s, should never be an issue,” she said. “If there’s just one thing that we can do it’s to share our mom’s story so that nobody else has to live through such trauma again.”
Sask. woman says information-sharing between provinces might have prevented mother’s life-threatening stroke
