Bringing Epic EHR to the Post-Acute Space at Spaulding
Spaulding Rehabilitation Network
is a year away from an Epic implementation as part of Partners HealthCare and
the project will be transformational according to its CIO.
The vision
for a learning health system put forth by federal officials includes connecting
all parts of the care continuum, connecting both the acute and post-acute
settings. Much of the challenge realizing this goal centers of standing up
health IT infrastructure in clinical environments where the benefits of EHR
incentive payments and the like were not available.
Spaulding
Rehabilitation Network in Massachusetts is currently preparing to join its
fellow hospitals in the Partners HealthCare system in a significant health IT
endeavor, an Epic implementation that will put all these clinical sites on a
common platform and enable EHR integration and health information exchange.
We're in a time of major transformation," Spaulding
CIO John Campbell, CHCIO, recently told EHRIntelligence.com. "The Partners
HealthCare system is in the middle of their Epic implementation. The Brigham
family and our home care organization went live last May. Mass. General and
that whole family are going live in a matter of days. When Mass. General has
gone live, 85 percent of the Partners implementation will be done. Then we get
to the Spaulding sites."
For Spaulding more so than its partners at MGH or Brigham
and Women's Hospital, this upcoming Epic implementation will be particularly
special in giving the post-acute (or non-acute) care network the opportunity to
have an Epic EHR solution tailored to its unique needs.
"Epic will be transformational for us because we
have a lot of challenges in our current IT footprint," Campbell maintains.
"A patient gets transferred to us from one of our acute hospitals and they
are on a different EMR, and even in this world of technology very
often the patient arrives in the bed with a stack of paper. We might be able to
go to some portal and get a snapshot of the patient, but it is really not the
full medical record."
Despite being part of the Partners health system, patient
information does not currently move smoothly between its various hospitals,
defying assumptions that integrated health systems have resolved issues
surrounding EHR interoperability.
"In many ways, even though we're within the same
system, a patient who comes to us from a hospital within our own system we may
not have better information or a better picture of that patient than if they
came from Beth Israel or another hospital outside our system," Campbell
adds.
With the Epic implementation already touching parts of
Partners (this interview occurred days before MGH and Brigham and Women's went
live), the benefits of a common, integrated EHR platform are already providing
a glimpse into Spaulding's future.
"It's phenomenal," says Campbell. "We're
already seeing that in our home care division where patients who move from
Brigham to Partners home care — the availability of information, access to the
complete record, communication that it enables between upstream providers and
downstream providers."
Spaulding's Epic implementation will also signal an
important moment for post-acute care settings as it pertains to working with
EHR vendors and their products.
"The commitment has really been there from Epic to
work with us and other systems around the country to build solutions for the
non-acute space, which is really kind of a seed change in the industry,"
Campbell observes. "Until recently very few of the big EMR vendors have
really been paying attention to the non-acute space. They are also working on
solutions for the skilled nursing space and the inpatient rehab space. We have
already implemented their home care module, which is a good module and we're
working with them to make it great."
In total, the Spaulding EHR implementation will span five
different hospitals and last between 12 and 15 months. And work is already well
underway in terms of preparations for 2017, much of it in collaboration with
Epic developers.
"They have already developed a module for long-term
acute care and we will implement that," Campbell reveals. "That
module will be in place at Partners by the time we go live at our long-term
acute hospital — Spaulding Cambridge — in April of 2017."
Alongside its collaborations with Epic, Spaulding is
working with Partners to ensure a successful go-live, including the use of one
project management office during the post-acute care network's multi-year
buildup to 2017.
Fortunately for Spaulding, the network has enjoyed the
backing of its parent system.
"At the Partners system level there is an
acknowledgment that non-acute is critical and important," says Campbell.
Additionally, Spaulding's own leadership ensures that the
post-acute care network has a strong and respected voice at the Partners table.
"We also have a very strong CEO within the Spaulding
network, David Storto," Campbell notes. "He's a strong advocate for
making sure we are appropriately represented at the Partners level, whatever
the initiative or strategy or forum is. Sometimes those invitations come to us
naturally because they should and sometimes David has to push to make sure they
happen. In the end, we always have a seat at the table."
The remaining 15 percent of work that remains for the
Partners Epic implementation is crucial to Spaulding's success in ensuring
high-quality care for its patients across the entire care continuum and
certainly carries more weight for the network itself.
Resource:
https://ehrintelligence.com/podcasts/bringing-epic-ehr-to-the-post-acute-space-at-spaulding
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