The time from the onset of Mr Jones's symptoms to the diagnosis in the community clinic was 30 minutes. The time from onset of symptoms to definitive therapy was 90 minutes.

    A few days later, Mr. Jones's primary care physician reviews Mr. Jones's lab, ECG, and cardiology notes in the MAINsuite™ patient's electronic record. Mr. Jones recounts the benefits of his experiences:

• prevention of life threatening heart damage
• reduced length of stay in hospital
• faster recovery
• faster scheduling
• avoidance of costly duplication of tests and traumatic surgery
• efficient use of community based health care resources across the continuum from the pharmacist to the home care provider
• elimination of delay due to multiple assessments at different facilities which could have delayed his ultimate treatment at the Heart Institute if his history had not been retrievable

    The Institute's Utilization Management Committee reviewed the costs associated with this episode of care as part of an ongoing study to increase efficiency and reduce costs. The data was also made available to the clinical epidemiologists for their study of cardiac care clinical outcomes.

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