You can now create an account, view past consultations on Quebec's Clic Sante health portal

Quebec loses ER doctors over system dysfunction, Bill 96 Two young Montreal-raised doctors are heading to Ontario, saying Quebec’s health-care management and language rules are too much.

The Clic Santé appointment booking portal in Quebec, which was used during the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, has expanded its functions in recent weeks.

It's now possible to create an account to make appointments, manage those of the entire family and view consultation history.

The company behind Clic Santé, Trimoz Technologies, announced the account function on Wednesday. A few hundred thousand Quebecers have already taken advantage.

While the goal is to facilitate the fall vaccination campaigns for COVID-19 and the flu, the portal can also be used to book other health-care services such as blood tests, pharmacy consultations or pediatric clinic appointments.

Stéphane Lajoie, president of Trimoz Technologies, believes the portal could one day apply to bookings with all health professionals.

With 7.1 million unique users already using Clic Santé, and a capacity to manage 400,000 appointments in a day, Lajoie believes the portal is quite robust and, above all, that it meets the government's cyber security requirements.

"It's valuable for the health ministry because people decide themselves to make their appointments. It relieves the pressure on the telephone services and we recover time in the health network," said Lajoie, noting that this new functionality results from a ministerial request.

Lajoie also wants to improve the customer experience on the portal. He's thinking particularly of families, who can manage their children's appointments from the same account, and family carers.

"The challenge we have before us now is to maintain the quality of the customer experience on the Clic Santé website, because the population has definitely adopted it, and to live up to these expectations by offering a maximum number of services," he added.

Lajoie also believes that with digital technology, it will be easier to "decompartmentalize health professions" and "offer alternatives when X professional is not available."

Some 60,000 people in the health network have been trained to use Clic Santé, he said.

The president's goal is for 50 per cent of users to have a Clic Santé account within a few months.

This report was first published in French by The Canadian Press on July 6, 2022.