Transcription:

Introduction: Sir William Osler, a seminal figure in the practice of medicine. Once said, the best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work extremely well. Today on the Hero Podcast, we'll learn more about today's work on Epic, the new electronic medical records system coming to the University of Maryland, Upper Chesapeake Health.

Colin Ward (Host): Good afternoon. I'm Colin Ward, Vice President of Population Health and I'm pleased to be joined by Katie Naughton and Angie Johnson, both of the University of Maryland medical system clinical informatics team. So Katie, let's begin with you as we get closer to the implementation date of Epic, which is coming in mid-March, what kind of behind the scenes things are you currently doing to ensure success?

Katie Naughton (Guest): Well, there's a lot that's going on within the clinical informatics team and the way of using clinical readiness activities. So we have things such as workflow dress rehearsal that we're planning and clinical readiness days, which is the Epic Fair 2.0. And also structured practice that will be going out throughout the organization. So those are times when we really engage the end users who are going through training right now and give them an opportunity to practice things that they'll be using on day one, as Epic goes live.

Host: So you used the phrase dress rehearsal. This is like preparing for a performance in some ways.

Katie Naughton: Exactly. So we're going to have an actual patient who is a test patient, but it's going to be one of the people that you see and know around the system and they're going to be walking through the hospital with the end users doing their, taking care of documentation from registration to the ED to surgery all the way through to discharge.

Host: Wow. Okay. And Angie, what other readiness activities are we embarking on at this point?

Angela Johnson: So Katie mentioned the clinical readiness days, which is our Epic Fair 2.0 a lot of people will probably remember the Fair that we had back in the Fall in October, and where we were kind of in the hallways and giving demos. So we're going to continue doing that. We're going to continue with the demos of showing the end users what to expect. And hopefully some of those people may have some training under their belt that we can kind of clarify what they're learning. Also give them more opportunities to kind of dive deeper into their specific areas to see what will affect them.

Host: And the difference between that first, that first demo day. And the second one is that there's some additional building of the system that's been taking place at this point. Right?

Angela Johnson: Correct. Right. So when we had our first demo, it was kind of like an overview of what the system had. This 2.0 is going to be more tailored to our upper Chesapeake environment and what we're going to actually be seeing.

Host: Okay. So Katie talk to me about readiness and why this is important. I mean, you can't just flip the switch on March 15th and know that you're good to go. Right?

Katie Naughton: Well you can. But what we gained from the readiness activities and what we've seen at other sites is it's really important for folks to take what they're learning, training and really get a chance to practice that. So if you're sitting in class for eight 12, 16 hours, you're taking in a lot of information. So what these readiness activities provide is an opportunity to really get that hands on practice that once you walk out of the classroom and you have a few weeks to a month before the end of your training and the beginning of go live, you need to have that opportunity to practice and get that muscle memory. So, especially with things like with our rolling practice that we're doing right before Go Live, it's hands on things like blood administration, the complex workflows that we know kind of make people hiccup as you go live. You want to give people a chance to really get that hands on and practice that.

Host: So the common, you know, how to document someone's vital signs, that's pretty standard and straightforward. It's these more infrequent occurrences that people need additional exposure to.

Katie Naughton: Yes, exactly.

Host: Okay. So how do you, Angie, then, how do you measure success at the point of going through these readiness activities or Katie, you know, are these things where there are metrics or this is your experiences is weighing in on how people are performance?

Katie Naughton: Yeah, so a lot of it is from our experience in previous Go Lives, we have seen the times where we have really in depth engagement of readiness activities are the times that we have the best Go Live. We'll still obviously have calls and need elbow support and things like that, but you're not, we see people who have an opportunity to spend more time practicing to be able to really take off running on day one. So I think the measure of success, it may not be seen until after we go live. It may be that we, our measure of success is really how comfortable you are as an end user with the system.

Host: Great. Great. So, Angie, are there things that the team members themselves can be doing, whether that team member is a nurse or a tech or a registration person or even a, a prescriber that they can be doing to prepare for the readiness portion of the Go Live.

Angela Johnson: I think just making sure that they're aware of when the events are scheduled and trying to come down to the locations to just pop in, even if they have a few minutes. You know, they don't need to spend a lot of time there. But I think it's really important that they do come and they do get involved because this will affect them. And also, after they get the training practice, we cannot stress that word enough is that the end users then need to take what they've learned and you know, try to schedule some time to practice and keep up with it so that they are ready and prepared for Go Live.

Host: So you're looking for these more frequent but smaller bursts of interaction with the Epic system to sort of help keep your training current and to help get you more confidence before March 15th.

Angela Johnson: Exactly.

Host: Okay. Now is there anything that you have learned in your previous implementations or that you've learned during the build phase of this either you know, workflow or what have you that can be applied to Upper Chesapeake teams to really help them maximize this window before Go Live?

Katie Naughton: I really just want to reiterate exactly what Angie said, the being involved and getting. If you see somebody rolling around your unit with a wow, and they're going to give you some practice, engage with that person. Because that's really it. Just you're seeing the workflows early often and having the chance to practice is going to make you so much more confident come March 15th, and that's what getting over that fear of that Go Live date. It's going to really help with that.

Host: Great. Angie, any final thoughts on how we get prepared here?

Angela Johnson: Just, again, the practicing and just getting comfortable and it's okay to not know everything. We're going to have a lot of resources on hand to help with the Go Live and the support. So just know that you're not alone and you can't break this system. We'll figure it out.

Host: Can't break the system. That's good to know. Excellent. All right, well thank you Katie and Angela from the University of Maryland Clinical Informatics Department. Good luck with the implementation.

Katie Naughton: Thanks for having us.

Angela Johnson: Thank you.

Host: You're listening to the university of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health Hero Podcast.