Tuesday, October 23 - CHI Memorial leadership has made the decision to go with a phased approach to the implementation of the Epic electronic medical record.  CHI Memorial will pause work to implement Epic in the ambulatory setting and continue with the intentional and well-developed implementation in the acute care environment. We remain committed to our goal of One Patient, One Record across all CHI Memorial hospitals and clinics.

Background:

CHI Memorial leadership, along with the EMR steering committee made the decision to implement Epic in the ambulatory and acute care setting at the same time.  A project team has been working alongside physician and clinical committees from across the organization to provide input into the design and system build, as well as participate in workflow sessions and guide the development of training protocols.

As this work has progressed, the Epic project team has identified substantive scope changes that necessitate we take a step back and examine our process for implementation to ensure the optimal go-live for the entire organization.  The scope changes we have identified are not insignificant from a time and budgetary standpoint; they impact the capital required to complete the project and will require an intense amount of manhours that are not be feasible under our current project timeline.

Following a thorough review of options and due diligence, the Epic executive sponsors made the recommendation to phase the Epic go live across the organization.  The acute care work will progress with the intent to go live June 1, 2019.  The intent is for the ambulatory go live to be scheduled for fiscal year 2020. 

Contributing factors:

• As is often the case, a full understanding of the interoperability and work flows necessary to bring all systems together in the acute and ambulatory setting is not clear until those close to the work begin the complicated design and development.  This was the experience at CHI Memorial.
• As work progressed, the team became increasingly aware of technical and clinical needs to design the optimal system for our clinicians and patients.

What does this mean for CHI Memorial?

• Our project teams have truly gone the extra mile to ensure there is a solid understanding of the Epic platform for a successful go live.  This work, in a short amount of time, is truly remarkable and we thank each person for their dedication. 
• The project teams working on the acute care implementation will continue to work toward the development of new milestones and timelines to achieve our stated objectives.  The project teams working on the ambulatory go live will pause until we have clarity on timelines for capital funding in fiscal year 2020.
• By pausing work on the ambulatory implementation now, we can focus the project team’s work on the acute care needs and strengthen our ability to ensure a successful go live.
• We anticipate having a more definitive project plan on the ambulatory implementation of Epic by the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2019.