USHERING IN AN EPIC NEW ERA AT UMASS MEMORIAL When UMass Memorial went live with its new electronic health record (EHR) system Epic in October 2017, it was an “epic” event in more ways than one. Epic is the recognized leader in the world of electronic health records. The software not only has won awards for its functionality and ease of use, but it’s the system that providers and caregivers overwhelmingly prefer. Today, it’s used in more than 1,300 U.S. hospitals, holding the medical records of 54 percent of the nation’s patients. Approximately 190 million patients have a current electronic record in Epic. “We can’t expect to make UMass Memorial Health Care the best place to give care and the best place to get care if we don’t give our staff the best electronic health record system available,” said President and CEO Eric Dickson, MD, when he signed the Epic contract in 2015. “Epic is that system, and it’s more dependable, user-friendly and better integrates all the information our caregivers need to provide the highest quality care possible for our patients.” UMass Memorial has 13,000 employees, and about 1,200 are front-line staff who participated in the selection and implementation of Epic, which replaces a nearly 120 different applications from different vendors. “As an organization, we made it a top priority [to get everyone involved in selecting the new system], said Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Tim Tarnowski in an interview with Healthcare IT News last year. “And when I say that, I mean everybody. Everybody who had to get training went to training. Everybody who had to help design the system, participated and engaged.” That involvement translated into a highly successful launch when Epic went live last October 1. In fact, Tarnowski—who’s been involved in previous implementations in his 30-year career—said it was “the smoothest go-live I’ve ever been a part of.” Epic is making it easier than ever to put the patient at the center of all that caregivers do at UMass Memorial. There is now a single sign-on solution for all of a clinician’s needs throughout the work day. (For a closer look at how this works, see the related story on how Cancer Care Services is using Epic to standardize chemotherapy regimens and enhance patient care on page 16.) In addition, Epic provides caregivers and patients a single solution that: •
Makes care coordination more efficient and effective
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Improves communication between care caregivers and patients
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Provides complete and accurate patient and provider information, all in one place
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Improves the patient experience and patient privacy
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Puts population health management tools at caregiver’s fingertips
“The patient will always be the focus of all that we do here at UMass Memorial,” Dr. Dickson adds. “Epic is an amazing tool for helping us do precisely that, more efficiently and effectively.”
one best suited for a particular chemotherapy protocol and made it the standard—and in compliance with national guidelines.” She explains further: “At the same time, if that anti-nausea medication doesn’t work optimally for a particular patient, it’s relatively seamless to modify the regimen to make it better for that patient,” she adds. “Overall, this approach increases patient safety because things are standardized—we’re not starting from scratch
with every order, and there’s less room for error,” Dr. Edmiston stresses. Equally important, patients undergoing cancer treatment at any one of UMass Memorial’s member hospitals are assured of receiving the same high-quality care, since the standardized chemotherapy regimens are used systemwide. “Our physicians and other clinicians have committed a great deal of time and effort to ensure that patients are getting the best, safest cancer treatment they can be given,” she adds. “That’s really at the heart of this entire initiative.”
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