Created in 1981, province’s program for emergency air medical services called Évacuations aéromédicales du Québec (EVAQ), whose clinical operations are run by the CHU de Québec-Université Laval (CHU), is designed to transport patients from Quebec’s remote regions to a specialized hospital when warranted by their health condition or when there is lack of other transportation options. To ensure that the service is accessible 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, the coordination hub receives transfer requests from regional physicians and assesses their suitability and priority.

Since 2006, the majority of patient-transfer planning tasks were done by hand and involved numerous paper documents. Meanwhile, the web-based application set up for the requesting hospitals was underutilized, and communication with the EVAQ mission preparation software wasn’t taking place. Since these tools were no longer meeting program expectations nor regional needs, the CHU deemed it necessary to upgrade them to optimize the services offered to the population and to ensure performance indicator monitoring and service improvements.

Always striving to improve patient care and services, the CHU implemented a digital platform in March 2020 to streamline the coordination of transfers for the benefit of everyone involved. This pioneering project, developed by a multidisciplinary team but essentially run by nurses, aims to ensure optimized and safe patient care through a collaborative, centralized digital platform accessible to partners throughout Quebec.

Project submitted by Audrey Frenette, Nurse Clinician, Head of EVAC Services

Other contributors to the project: Maude Trépanier, Nurse Clinician, project spokesperson; Audrey Bonfils, Computer Systems Analyst; Christiane Savoie, Nurse Clinician; Delphine Daumain, Nurse Clinician; Karen St-Pierre, Advanced Practice Nurse; Marie-Claude Leclerc, DRI Project Manager; Philippe Delisle, Nurse Clinician; and Sonia Vallée-Cyr, Nurse Clinician