Implementing an EHR system change at a hospital or health system, if done successfully, can lead to a positive return on investment. But a go-live that goes wrong can also have negative ramifications for the organization's financial picture without effective strategies and tools.
During a March 17 webinar, hosted by Becker's Hospital Review and sponsored by Ensemble Health Partners, presenters shared tips for success based on their experience with more than 30 Epic implementations, including one at a 21-hospital integrated health system in the Southeast.
Julie Roberts, vice president of Epic services at Ensemble, facilitated the discussion.
Presenters from Ensemble were:
- Sarah Armstrong, executive vice president of client integrations and optimization
- Shana Tate, senior vice president of revenue cycle
The key takeaways:
1. Establish multiple meetings and committees. Presenters stressed the importance of collaboration and establishing multiple meetings and committees that include revenue cycle staff. This includes operational and IT combined meetings, as well as go-live readiness assessment meetings and one-off meetings as needed to discuss transition issues. It's important to be aware of project readiness versus operational readiness.
2. Implement a situation, background, assessment and recommendation process quickly. Presenters recommend implementing the situation, background, assessment and recommendation technique, a tool used to improve communication and decision-making among health care team members. Armstrong said that at a lot of organizations, the hospital operations team will tell the IT team or the billing team: 'Make Epic do this.' You really want to establish that the operations team should be opening tickets or making requests based on the outcome they're trying to achieve and let the IT/Billing team determine what's the right configuration.
3. Invest in and educate your leaders. Armstrong said it's important to invest in and educate hospital leaders during an EHR transition. This could include sending leaders to site visits at other organizations that have already done their implementations.
4. Don't replicate bad processes in the new system. When implementing an EHR system change, hospitals should actively strive to not replicate bad processes that were in the old EHR system, said Tate. For example, during an implementation she was part of, she noticed EHR system edits in the revenue cycle were being replicated within the clearinghouse instead of into the host system, which is the better practice. The organization "knew how to fix those edits [and] how to accurately get those claims out, [but it] didn't necessarily understand or realize how that needs to happen within the [new] Epic system," she said.
5. Discuss problems as they arise. Presenters recommend discussing problems as they arise during the EHR transition. This is so problems don't carry over into all areas affected by the EHR, including finance, scheduling and authorization and supply chain.
To access the webinar recording, click here. To learn more about Ensemble, click here.