Quebec plans to spend $1.5 billion over 15 years to digitize the health network as part of its contract with the American giant Epic Systems, a record for a Quebec state IT project.
The amount of the contract, concluded last August, was discreetly revealed at the bottom of a press release last Friday.
Thus, the pilot project to implement the Digital Health Record (DSN) in the CIUSSS du Nord-de-l’Île-de-Montréal and the CIUSSS de la Mauricie-et-du-Centre-du-Québec should cost 533 M$ over 12 years.
Originally planned for the end of 2022, the full deployment of this first phase is now expected by the end of 2025.
With the DSN, Minister of Health Christian Dubé hopes to digitize, once and for all, the health network. Thus, doctors from various establishments will be able, for example, to consult a patient’s history without having to transfer the paper file from one hospital to another.
Same thing for patients, who will have access to their file online.
If the first tests are conclusive, implementation throughout the network will cost a total of $1.5 billion over 15 years, according to the contract planned with Epic Systems, a company already established in numerous health networks in the United States. United and elsewhere in the world. Moreover, Minister Dubé’s office argues that the establishment of Epic Systems in Alberta, at a cost estimated between $1.3B and $1.6B, has been successful.
The amount submitted by the other finalist in the bidding process, Cerner Canada, has not been made public.
Mammoth project
One thing is certain, with this amount, the DSN displays the highest initial bill of all the IT projects implemented by the Quebec state, an area where cost overruns are frequent.
The SAGIR project, which experienced numerous failures in the management of civil servants’ pay, anticipated an initial cost of $570 million. It ultimately required $1.2 billion.
For its part, the RENIR emergency telecommunications system was to cost $144 million. Due to numerous problems, the project has so far swallowed up more than a billion dollars.
Three times more than SAAQclic
Ironically, the DSN will replace another system that has cost Quebec taxpayers dearly, the Quebec Health Record, which allows the sharing of a limited amount of information. Promised for delivery in 2011 at $543 million, it was finally completed in 2021 for $1.8 billion.
Added to this is $238 million for the computerized clinical file, created in parallel, which will also become obsolete in the new system.
In comparison, the recent SAAQclic project, widely described as a fiasco, cost “only” $458 million.
In pharmacies in Quebec, the digitization of the health network is being described as “the largest digital transformation project” in the history of the government. “This is an important project that we are carrying out in stages, precisely to ensure success,” notes Minister Dubé’s press secretary.
A whole mandate
If Quebec moves forward with a large-scale deployment at the end of the pilot project, the firm Epic Systems will have a full mandate.
In its call for tenders, Quebec emphasized that its network includes 9,000 information systems, 65,000 connected equipment, 2,000 telehealth equipment and 220,000 computers.
In addition, it will be necessary to train the approximately 400,000 health employees, who will have to learn to use the new tool.
–With the collaboration of Nicolas Lachance