In Ontario, if you have a health card swipe reader, you can swipe the patient’s card to easily add the patient to TELUS Collaborative Health Record (CHR). If the patient already exists, you can swipe their health card to quickly find them and update their demographic information or open their chart.
For a list of supported swipe readers, refer to Hardware and software requirements.
Steps
1. From the main menu, click Patients and then click the health card icon in the top-right corner.
2. When the Read Patient ID Card window appears, swipe the patient's health card. The patient's information is displayed.
📌 Note: If the patient already exists in the system, you are notified that there is a patient with the same identification. Click the pencil icon to update the patient's information, or the chart icon to open their chart.
3. To add the patient as a new patient, click Register This Patient.
The Register New Patient window opens, with the information populated from the health card (name, date of birth, sex, and OHIP number).
4. Complete the remaining fields to add the patient. For more information, visit Adding patients.
💡 Tip: If an Unsupported Card Type error appears when you swipe the health card, this generally indicates that the magnetic stripe on the card is damaged, which is not uncommon.
To test the magnetic strip, open a text editor, such as Notepad or Text Edit, and swipe the health card there. The data should appear in a similar format to the following example. Most notably, it should start with %B610054 .
Updated May 8, 2023