An Epic Decision for the Enterprise Clinical Information System
After an in-depth evaluation, Partners HealthCare has selected Epic as its preferred vendor for the enterprise clinical system.
The decision to select Epic is a major step forward in the process to develop a fully integrated clinical and administrative information system across the Partners enterprise that pulls together all existing systems, such as CPOE, Patient Scheduling and Bed Management, ED, OB, Pharmacy/Medication Administration and more. Clinicians and health care professionals throughout Partners will ultimately use the enterprise clinical system in the care of 5.7 million patients. The new system will also help advance investigation and educational activities.
“When the system is implemented, it will help us become much more efficient in that we won’t have to access multiple systems in the care of a single patient,” said Chief Medical Officer Stan Ashley, MD.
Senior Vice President of Patient Care Services and Chief Nursing Officer Jackie Somerville, PhD, RN, noted the benefit for patients. “This system will help patients’ information travel with them across the continuum,” she said. “This ensures that their information will be accessible to all of the teams that are part of their care.”
Hundreds of staff throughout Partners were involved in reviewing the different products and providing feedback that ultimately led to the selection of Epic. The move toward using a product developed by an outside vendor is a significant change from past practice, when clinicians and IS staff worked together to develop systems tailored to clinicians’ needs. Using an integrated product suite across the Partners system will allow for more efficient sharing of records and information.
“While we will have less ability to make our systems unique, we expect that the new clinical and revenue system will be much more integrated than our current fragmented suite of applications,” BWH Chief Information Officer Sue Schade said. “This will support the workflow of clinicians and administrative staff much more effectively, and more importantly ensure a seamless experience for our patients across the continuum of care whether they are receiving care from a hospital, a clinic, a rehabilitation setting or at home.”
Partners is in the process of selecting a consulting firm to assist in implementation of the enterprise clinical system. The next few months will involve extensive planning for the overall timeline and sequencing of Partners entities to implement the new system.
“Although we have a lot of work ahead to implement an enterprise clinical system, it’s also an exciting time,” said Schade. “The information system that we implement will help us deliver the highest quality care more affordably, measure its effectiveness and more actively engage patients in their own care.”
Given the importance of clinical and revenue systems integration, Partners leadership also reviewed the Compass program (Partners’ administrative systems and revenue cycle project). As a result, a decision was made to switch from Siemens Soarian to the Epic suite of applications for the Compass program as well. Using a single vendor will help Partners better integrate the clinical and revenue applications.