OneCare Update
June 29, 2012 - Effectively immediately, Memorial Health Care System will stop work to implement Meditech 6.0. Planning will begin next week to transition Memorial to implement the CHI-hosted Cerner platform and McKesson Star for revenue cycle with a new go-live date of June 30, 2013.
Memorial Health Care System was originally scheduled to go-live with Meditech 6.0 on October 1, 2012. Being the first CHI hospital to go-live with Meditech 6.0, Memorial leadership recognized that they would serve as the learning ground and pave the way for other Meditech 6.0 implementations. Over the past six months, the national and local project teams have encountered significant challenges and barriers for being able to achieve a successful EHR implementation in a hospital with the complexity and size of Memorial. Concerns from Memorial’s leadership and the Meditech project teams were heard by the OneCare Core Team and Executive Steering Council. Following a thorough review of options and due diligence, OneCare Executive Sponsors made the recommendation, which was approved by President’s Council, to transition to the Cerner for clinical documentation and McKesson Star for revenue cycle.
As is often the case, a full understanding of a software’s technical abilities and flexibility cannot be fully understood until those close to the work can see the detail and test the functionality. As the work progressed at Memorial, the team became increasing aware of technical and clinical content challenges that would put physician and clinician adoption at risk due to CPOE and clinical content mapping issues.
The good news is that most of the work done for Meditech will be completely transferable to Cerner using a slightly different approach. Beginning next week, we will start to develop the new Cerner implementation plan and anticipate project teams will need to reengage quickly. We anticipate having a contract in place with Cerner by mid to the end of August.
Memorial project teams have worked long hours, truly going the extra mile to ensure a good product at go-live. We cannot thank all involved enough for their dedication and work on this project and look forward to each member continuing as we transition to Cerner.
Until the Cerner project is underway, Meditech team members will be reabsorbed into their regular assignments. They will be compensated out of the OneCare budget the hours they would normally devote to Meditech, until they can return to their normal assignments. We anticipate this process to take from one to two weeks.
Transitioning to Cerner will allow us to:
- Partner with St. Vincent Health System in Little Rock for a deeper dive to understand and plan for workflow changes that will significantly impact our physicians, nurses and clinicians.
- Leverage proven success with Saint Clare’s recent Cerner implementation as well as many other Cerner sites.
- Keep the same Meaningful Use reimbursement schedule for Federal FY13. 89% of Cerner’s clients are projected to attest for MU stage 1 by the end of Federal FY12. To date 248 Cerner facilities have successfully attested.
- Easily maximize CHI’s Cerner partnership for purchased software and infrastructure that is already configured and in place for the CHI-hosted Cerner platform.
We want to again pause and express our gratitude to all of the team leads and team members for the tremendous amount of work on the Meditech 6.0 project. An overwhelming percentage of their work will transfer to the Cerner project, which will well position us for a successful launch.
