Minneapolis-based Virtelligence, a health IT consulting company, outlined six key steps to a successful EHR go-live in a company blog post by Ayesha Wallayat.
Here are the six steps from Virtelligence, which has helped with more than 200 Epic implementations.
1. Planning and assessment. The first step Virtelligence recommends, even before starting the implementation process, is evaluating the hospital's current technology and goals.
2. Analysis. The next step involves understanding the project scope and what the hospital expects the EHR's business process workflow to look like.
3. Design. There are five aspects in the design phase.
- A strong project team should be able to communicate changes to staff, help them navigate the new platform and give end-users confidence.
- Functional specifications help to identify the development time for each aspect of the EHR rollout.
- The project timeline lays out when each objective should be completed.
- A project schedule details when each project resource should be completed for every portion of timeline.
- The work statement is a master list of the entire project's deliverables.
4. Development. The beta testing, usability testing and other responsibilities outlined in the work statement take place during this phase.
5. Delivery. The delivery phase comprises ensuring the project's objectives are completed by their deadline. This phase is also when organizations using a consultant like Virtelligence receive their EHR system.
6. Training and Support. A consulting company will typically remain on site during this phase to teach staff how to use the system, as well as make any necessary optimizations or bug fixes.
Click here to read the full blog post.
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