Setting a strategy to realize the full potential of your IT team and Epic platform takes time, attention, and experience. Our CereCore team has worked with clients on solution and acquisition advising, staff augmentation, go-live planning and post-live support in single and hybrid EHR environments. This combined experience totaling more than 100K hours of Epic work has resulted in an insightful list of questions that can help you guide your organization’s implementation journey.
Planning for Your Epic Implementation
1. Do you have outpatient practices and hospital outpatient departments to consider?
2. Are your policies (ex: critical results, restraints), order sets (ex: order panel, protocols), KPIs, and workflow changes (ex: chart, admit, discharge) consistent across your service lines?
3. What are your plans for Hyperdrive?
4. How will your legacy system and data be managed after you go live on Epic?
5. How will your revenue cycle tools be impacted during the implementation and after?
6. How will your staffing capacity be impacted during and after implementation? How will you address capacity challenges?
More Information About Planning for Your Epic Implementation
During Your Epic Implementation and Go-Live
7. What is the timeline for your implementation and will your team support it or will additional staff be needed?
8. Who will educate and train your users? With what resources? On what timeframe?
9. Who will design/validate your Epic workflows?
10. Who will develop comprehensive testing plans for functional and integrated testing across devices, hardware, and workflows? Who will remediate any errors?
11. How do you need to coordinate with other hospitals, practices, Community Connect instances, etc. in your system?
12. How will you manage cutover and go-live support?
13. How will you manage, track, support, and escalate issues during go-live?
14. How will you provide go-live support that promotes physician engagement and adoption by other care team members (ex: nurses, pharmacists, etc.), and support services (ex: transport, schedulers, revenue cycle), and patients (ex: MyChart)?
15. How will your legacy system access and data be managed during your transition to Epic and post-go-live?
More Information About During Your Epic Implementation and Go-Live
After Your Epic Implementation
16. How will you manage, track, support, and escalate issues and optimization requests post-live?
17. How will you continually improve and optimize your Epic implementation?
18. How will you support mergers/acquisitions if they arise?
19. How will you maintain regulatory compliance?
20. How will you stay current with Epic upgrades?
More Information About After Your Epic Implementation
Next steps
Wherever you are in your organization’s journey with the Epic EHR, these questions can help you consider whether there is opportunity to address gaps in your resourcing. Involving CereCore advisors to help you plan, implement, and/or manage aspects of your implementation can help you acquire knowledge gained through decades of experience and move patient care forward.
