Oklahoma Heart Hospital: Partnership for Interface Optimization

Oklahoma Heart Hospital and CereCore collaborated to ready 128 interfaces during their transition from Cerner Millennium to Epic.

The Client

• Oklahoma Heart Hospital (OHH) is a physician-owned healthcare institution renowned for its patient-centric approach and exceptional cardiac care.
• OHH has earned numerous accolades, including the 2024 Community Choice Award and recognition on Newsweek’s America’s Best Cardiac Hospitals list. 
• OHH is comprised of two hospital campuses as well as a network of more than 90 cardiovascular specialists at more than 60 clinic and hospital locations across Oklahoma.
  

The Challenge

Upon his arrival as the new CIO, David Miles identified the need to consolidate a vast vendor portfolio and transition to Epic from Cerner Millennium which had been in use for twenty years. The existing EHR had over a million lines of custom code, making it unsustainable and difficult to upgrade. The primary challenge was to ensure that the new Epic system could integrate seamlessly with the hospital’s existing infrastructure, which included 128 different interfaces. OHH leaders emphasized the importance of maintaining efficiency and standardization across the organization. They sought to leverage automation and consolidate staff roles to enhance operational efficiency.

How We Helped

• Built 128 different interfaces, ensuring systems communicated effectively with the new Epic platform. This involved extensive planning, testing, and coordination with various stakeholders.
• Helped to map and build out within Epic and on the Rhapsody server all the needs for these third-party systems. This approach minimized the need for extensive custom code and ensured that the new system could be easily supported and upgraded. 
• Assisted OHH with their Epic implementation that was completed in just 11 months (earlier than the 12-month goal established at the onset of the project).
• OHH decided to partner with CereCore after determining they needed additional expertise to complete interface integration in the time allotted for the project. Combining their team’s know-how with CereCore experts brought the right skills together for building complex interface integrations and helped ensure a smooth transition to the new system.
  

An Interface Conversion Feat

During the 11 month project, over 7,000 hours were needed to transition 128 interfaces from Cerner Millennium to Epic. That’s an estimated 57 hours per interface for pre-conversion understanding, conversion planning, optimization, and execution, and finally conversion testing and workflow validation. The partnership between OHH and CereCore highlights the importance of collaborative partners and expert management in accomplishing major EHR transitions.

"We found their expertise and depth of knowledge incredible and their work ethic helped us ensure an on time go-live. We relied on them for not only writing parts of our interfaces, but also for architecture and documentation. There were times we didn’t know exactly what was needed, but we found great and tremendous value in the assets that work there at CereCore. I'll be very frank, we couldn't have done this without CereCore and our gratitude extends beyond what I can tell you.”

David Miles | CIO, Oklahoma Heart Hospital