Continuing our conversation on what to consider when upgrading your MEDITECH 6.1x platform to Expanse, there are multiple enhancements across the product suite that you can leverage to make the most of your MEDITECH investment. Here are three more insights to factor in before deciding to go through this process:
1. Build and Test – The Expanse upgrade will impact each department collaborating with MEDITECH, however, a few configuration changes will support the transition to the new Web Acute/Emergency Department Physician user interface. This upgrade affects applications including Order Management (OM), Physician Care Manager (PCM), Physician Documentation, and Emergency Department Management. Additionally, it will affect a few functional areas such as Physician Desktop, Physician Documentation, EMR-patient chart, Ordering, Discharge, EDM Trackers, Messaging, and Infrastructure. Pharmacy (PHA) dictionaries should be reviewed and updated during the build process as well. After updates take place, configuration testing within MEDITECH and external systems are necessary to organize changes and test key changes such as reports, downloads, and extracts. This ensures that data reporting and analytics are running correctly. Lastly, the infrastructure, devices, and responsiveness should be tested.
2. Training – The primary reason organizations are upgrading to Expanse from 6.1x is overall adoption and utilization of the new Web Physician user interface. That said, you should account for ample end-user training to ensure a high level of adoption. Training should not only incorporate Expanse, but other tools such as voice recognition that can physicians utilize. Using creativity when distributing information to physicians throughout the upgrade project is important so they are prepared prior to training. This can be done through scheduled sessions via computer-based training tools or other standard meetings. Closer to go-live, more training is required to allow time to put all new information to practice. Prior to go-live, we encourage you to identify a few super-users and department staff to train and become leaders as they are vital to support during go-live and post go-live. After go-live, you should anticipate system changes and provide on-going training to impacted end-users.
3. Go-Live – A go-live plan and resource schedule is an important part of the Expanse upgrade. You need a period of 14 days with flexibility to increase, or decrease, based on overall stability. An appropriate level of go-live support primarily for physicians using Web Acute/Emergency Department functionality is key. There should also be at-the-elbow support for physicians so questions and issues can be quickly addressed and resolved. Tips and tricks need to be communicated on regular basis to monitor utilization and adoption during go-live as well. We advise that you take time to document lessons learned which will help with the transition when the go-live period ends. To maximize investment during this time, it is important to leverage upgrade successes to implement more Expanse functions across the MEDITECH product suite.
In our experience, these three factors are integral to this project’s success. If you are considering upgrading to Expanse and would like to talk more about how your organization can best approach a project of this scale, please email us at info@cerecore.net or call us at 855.276.9112. As an approved collaborative vendor for MEDITECH’s platforms, CereCore offers healthcare-grade IT services that have been implemented, optimized, and supported from the provider perspective. We draw upon our considerable scale and experience in hundreds of hospitals across the country to tailor technology solutions we know will work for the clinician, the facility, and most of all, the patient. Our heart for healthcare interconnects with our knowledge of technical solutions, creating a vital link that ultimately drives the delivery of high-quality care.
