A Support Staffing Budgeting Story
Creative Staffing Coordination for Budget Friendly Epic Implementations
The Client
A private nonprofit organization with eight hospitals in North Carolina. The organization holds multiple Joint Commission certifications, healthy workplace recognition, and industry performance awards.
The Facilty
- 1,000+ bed
- Eight-hospital regional health system
- > One million inpatient and outpatients annually
- 7,400 employees and 1,300 physicians on medical staff
Results
Involving an Epic clinical expert for consultation led to:
- Ensured clinical operational readiness through review of the client’s EHR requirements and policies
- Realistic goals and timelines based on prior experience in M&A situations
- Reporting on impact of strategic imperatives on resources before, during and after transition
- Anticipated issues and facilitation to avoid and recover
- Addition of an advisor who addressed turnover on the internal project team
The Challenge
The health system’s staffing plan to support the Epic EHR go-live in two newly acquired hospitals was 160% of their allocated budget for the project. They needed to find a way to keep at-the-elbow support costs within budget.
How We Helped
A well staffed and coordinated Epic go-live sets the tone of how the new system will be accepted and utilized in the healthcare facility. Our Epic services team approached this client’s problem of an over-budget support plan with a redesigned support solution that realigned the staffing plan to meet all support criteria. A staffing coordinator on site for the go-live worked with all support and command center personnel. Staff were redeployed as needed to areas requiring assistance. This allowed the go-live support personnel to cover both of the hospitals 24/7. We built in a taper
for support over the two week go-live period. We also ensured that the plan included coverage for all of their specialty areas and hospital outpatient departments. The healthcare organization was able to meet their budget and provide exemplary support for their staff with our customized go-live staffing plan.
This health system has worked with CereCore to find dozens of qualified Epic resources
for their initiatives and to backfill positions, including analysts for Beaker, ClinDoc, Willow,
Ambulatory, MyChart, Claims, and others. When they approached us to discuss their overbudget
go-live support plan, CereCore brought unrivaled Epic expertise and hospital operations perspectives including:
Advisory Services
- Working knowledge of support-to-staff ratios to help design flexible plans
- Deep Epic knowledge enhanced CereCore’s ability to call out specialty areas and design a specific plan for this organization
- Consultants with deep healthcare and Epic experience
- Multiple go-live experienced consultants from diverse hospital and clinic settings
Staffing Coordinator with over 30 years of healthcare experience
- Coordinator had multiple go-live experiences and 10+ years of Epic experience
- Being onsite she was able to deal with any staffing issues and redeploy/flex staff as needed
Project Highlights
| The go-live support plan provided the right level of support with the on-site staffing coordinator helped redeploy staff to areas where providers and other users requested assistance
| Specialty areas had trained staff for their unique workflows
| Planned tapering made it easier to reduce overstaffing
| The go-live support plan was within budget using a plan that was 60% less than their initial projections
