Epic: Activation
Octavia Johnson MBA, MA, BS, BA discusses the activation process of Epic.
Featuring:
Octavia Johnson, MBA, MA, BS, BA
Octavia Johnson, MBA, MA, BS, BA is the Activations Manager - Portfolio Implementations; Program Manager - Clinical Informatics & Information Systems. Transcription:
Colin Ward (Host): Everyone prepare, it’s coming. Today on the Hero podcast hear more about activation for implementation of the new EPIC electronic medical system at the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health. Good afternoon. I'm Colin Ward, vice president of population health. I'm pleased to be joined by Octavia Johnson, activations manager for portfolio implementations and program manager for the University of Maryland medical system clinical informatics and information systems. That is a mouthful Octavia. Thanks for joining me.
Octavia Johnson, MBA, MA, BS, BA (Guest): Thank you for having me.
Host: Well, let’s start right there. What does an activations manager do?
Octavia: So an activation manager essentially means that I am, as someone just described, the air traffic controller for our implementation and making sure that we have all of the parts and parcels in place to be ready to implement the system fully coming up on March 15th. So it’s managing all of the teams together to make sure that we've completed all of those tasks that are necessary to make sure that we’re ready to go live.
Host: Okay. So your job goes beyond this notion of readiness, which is do the end users know how to interface with the system? You’ve got a lot of variables to be controlling here.
Octavia: Yeah, that’s true. Really I like to stay that we partner with all of the teams because it really is truly a team effort. There's a lot of moving parts. A lot of teams have really heavy duties and tasks within the full activation plan that they have to make sure are lining up. So it really is kind of lining up the dominos so that we can knock them all down together on the 15th of March.
Host: I've heard you describe yourself as a wedding planner for an EPIC implementation. Why is that? Describe that.
Octavia: I call it the wedding planning because, again, each time has their area of responsibility and it really is managing and coordinating all of those parts and pieces together. If the orders team doesn’t have all of the order entries corrected and if the clinical and patient team doesn’t have our conversion pieces ready to go. If the readiness team doesn’t have the folks ready to actually begin using the system then we kind of fall apart at the seams. So it’s kind of that concerted effort of making sure that everyone has what they need and that we’re also marching down towards that date together so that we can say, “Yes, now we’re ready to go live.”
Host: And our go live is March 15th. You’ve been working to assess our activation levels for many months now. When did this activity begin on activation?
Octavia: Yeah. So actually we began almost a little over a year ago now. As soon as we kicked our last go live back in January we started the work of looking to see how Upper Chesapeake is laid out, how our locations are set aside, and how are staff are working currently. We’ve done site walkthroughs and assessments, and everyone here has been really integral in that process of making sure that we can get an understanding of how we’re working today so that we can start working towards understanding what happens in those readiness activities and those different events to get us ready for the new change that’s coming.
Host: Okay. So you mentioned the word readiness a few times. Give us a sense about a little bit of the difference between readiness and activation here.
Octavia: Yeah. So readiness is actually a part of the activation plan. It’s a part of those things that we want to check off together to say, “Yes we feel comfortable. Yes, we feel confident that we’ve gone through. We understand our training. We understand what we are doing when we’re touching in the system. Yes, we’re now ready to say that we can take on this new undertaking with our new EPIC deployment.” Readiness covers our inpatient areas. We have similar activities in our outpatient world. We have things that need to happen within our ORs. We have things that need to happen literally in every part of the house. The activation piece covers all of those and kind of makes sure that they all flow together.
Host: Okay. So is there a particular thing that our team members, the end users of the system, need to know about in terms of activation or are they more oriented to this notion of readiness?
Octavia: I think that readiness is definitely a part of it. If you think about activation, it’s the umbrella that covers all of it. So activation should be an exciting time. It should be a time when folks are really getting the notion that we’re coming toward the end of this kind of goal line piece that we’ve been working towards. A lot of times it’s hard to connect all the dots when we’re thinking about build and we’re thinking about workflow changes. When you get to see it all together, that’s what that activation window gets us the ability to see how it all fits together. And how when I change and do my orders in a certain way, how does it affect the other teams in the lab area, for instance? How will it change what I do today currently? So when you think of activation, it really is kind of that full umbrella view. Folks should get excited about the changes coming as opposed to being intimidated by that big word.
Host: Nervous.
Octavia: Yeah, exactly.
Host: Okay. Now you did describe a little bit of air traffic controlling activity. So if we’re going live on March 15th and you're the air traffic controller, you and your team are going to be the ones that say, “Hey, we’re ready for takeoff here.” So as we get closer here, what are the things that start to make you feel confident that Upper Chesapeake Health is prepared for this implementation?
Octavia: So there's quite a few things. We tend to use a lot of measures that are there and just built into the plan, right. So we look at training. We look at are folks engaging in their training actively? Are they signing up for their training? Are they moving forward? If we see trends in different areas where we see them moving a little bit more slowly for their registration or being even excited about those different activities then we can recognize we may need to pay a little bit more attention to them when we’re going live and helping to support them. If we look at those different activities, if we have teams that are falling behind on some of their tasks within the activation plan, if they have certain dates that they're hard to meet, we want to jump in and try to help them again to get them to a place where they do feel confident and ready. So there’s a couple of different ways that we kind of go through. It really is about being in touch with accessible to the end users also. So we look at it from an operational leadership level as well as from an organizational level to see how folks are taking in and adapting to the change. Then it also gives us a good idea of how we can support everyone once we’re live on the 15th and beyond.
Host: And you’ve done this many times. So are there any learnings from previous implementations and the runup to that implementation that you have pulled forward to give our team members confidence that you already know what all the variables are, and you’ve already considered them in the plan.
Octavia: Absolutely. Something that I've been trying to say repeatedly to the folks here at Upper Chesapeake is that you guys are really in a good position. One thing I can say is that everyone has been really engaged, really active, really interested in the project itself and wanting to know what do I need to be doing? Where should I be? What are my team’s responsible for? That type of engagement is what really helps us to be successful. We know that the application teams will work hard on the backend in making sure that the technical system is ready. Again, getting everyone on site engaged and active and really having an understanding of what the changes will be makes the major difference. So definitely we bring that into our knowledge base for this go live.
Host: Great. Well thank you Octavia and good luck with the implementation.
Octavia: Thank you. Good luck.
Host: Alright. That’s Octavia Johnson, activities manage for University of Maryland Medical System clinical informatics teams. You're listening to the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health Hero Podcast.
Colin Ward (Host): Everyone prepare, it’s coming. Today on the Hero podcast hear more about activation for implementation of the new EPIC electronic medical system at the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health. Good afternoon. I'm Colin Ward, vice president of population health. I'm pleased to be joined by Octavia Johnson, activations manager for portfolio implementations and program manager for the University of Maryland medical system clinical informatics and information systems. That is a mouthful Octavia. Thanks for joining me.
Octavia Johnson, MBA, MA, BS, BA (Guest): Thank you for having me.
Host: Well, let’s start right there. What does an activations manager do?
Octavia: So an activation manager essentially means that I am, as someone just described, the air traffic controller for our implementation and making sure that we have all of the parts and parcels in place to be ready to implement the system fully coming up on March 15th. So it’s managing all of the teams together to make sure that we've completed all of those tasks that are necessary to make sure that we’re ready to go live.
Host: Okay. So your job goes beyond this notion of readiness, which is do the end users know how to interface with the system? You’ve got a lot of variables to be controlling here.
Octavia: Yeah, that’s true. Really I like to stay that we partner with all of the teams because it really is truly a team effort. There's a lot of moving parts. A lot of teams have really heavy duties and tasks within the full activation plan that they have to make sure are lining up. So it really is kind of lining up the dominos so that we can knock them all down together on the 15th of March.
Host: I've heard you describe yourself as a wedding planner for an EPIC implementation. Why is that? Describe that.
Octavia: I call it the wedding planning because, again, each time has their area of responsibility and it really is managing and coordinating all of those parts and pieces together. If the orders team doesn’t have all of the order entries corrected and if the clinical and patient team doesn’t have our conversion pieces ready to go. If the readiness team doesn’t have the folks ready to actually begin using the system then we kind of fall apart at the seams. So it’s kind of that concerted effort of making sure that everyone has what they need and that we’re also marching down towards that date together so that we can say, “Yes, now we’re ready to go live.”
Host: And our go live is March 15th. You’ve been working to assess our activation levels for many months now. When did this activity begin on activation?
Octavia: Yeah. So actually we began almost a little over a year ago now. As soon as we kicked our last go live back in January we started the work of looking to see how Upper Chesapeake is laid out, how our locations are set aside, and how are staff are working currently. We’ve done site walkthroughs and assessments, and everyone here has been really integral in that process of making sure that we can get an understanding of how we’re working today so that we can start working towards understanding what happens in those readiness activities and those different events to get us ready for the new change that’s coming.
Host: Okay. So you mentioned the word readiness a few times. Give us a sense about a little bit of the difference between readiness and activation here.
Octavia: Yeah. So readiness is actually a part of the activation plan. It’s a part of those things that we want to check off together to say, “Yes we feel comfortable. Yes, we feel confident that we’ve gone through. We understand our training. We understand what we are doing when we’re touching in the system. Yes, we’re now ready to say that we can take on this new undertaking with our new EPIC deployment.” Readiness covers our inpatient areas. We have similar activities in our outpatient world. We have things that need to happen within our ORs. We have things that need to happen literally in every part of the house. The activation piece covers all of those and kind of makes sure that they all flow together.
Host: Okay. So is there a particular thing that our team members, the end users of the system, need to know about in terms of activation or are they more oriented to this notion of readiness?
Octavia: I think that readiness is definitely a part of it. If you think about activation, it’s the umbrella that covers all of it. So activation should be an exciting time. It should be a time when folks are really getting the notion that we’re coming toward the end of this kind of goal line piece that we’ve been working towards. A lot of times it’s hard to connect all the dots when we’re thinking about build and we’re thinking about workflow changes. When you get to see it all together, that’s what that activation window gets us the ability to see how it all fits together. And how when I change and do my orders in a certain way, how does it affect the other teams in the lab area, for instance? How will it change what I do today currently? So when you think of activation, it really is kind of that full umbrella view. Folks should get excited about the changes coming as opposed to being intimidated by that big word.
Host: Nervous.
Octavia: Yeah, exactly.
Host: Okay. Now you did describe a little bit of air traffic controlling activity. So if we’re going live on March 15th and you're the air traffic controller, you and your team are going to be the ones that say, “Hey, we’re ready for takeoff here.” So as we get closer here, what are the things that start to make you feel confident that Upper Chesapeake Health is prepared for this implementation?
Octavia: So there's quite a few things. We tend to use a lot of measures that are there and just built into the plan, right. So we look at training. We look at are folks engaging in their training actively? Are they signing up for their training? Are they moving forward? If we see trends in different areas where we see them moving a little bit more slowly for their registration or being even excited about those different activities then we can recognize we may need to pay a little bit more attention to them when we’re going live and helping to support them. If we look at those different activities, if we have teams that are falling behind on some of their tasks within the activation plan, if they have certain dates that they're hard to meet, we want to jump in and try to help them again to get them to a place where they do feel confident and ready. So there’s a couple of different ways that we kind of go through. It really is about being in touch with accessible to the end users also. So we look at it from an operational leadership level as well as from an organizational level to see how folks are taking in and adapting to the change. Then it also gives us a good idea of how we can support everyone once we’re live on the 15th and beyond.
Host: And you’ve done this many times. So are there any learnings from previous implementations and the runup to that implementation that you have pulled forward to give our team members confidence that you already know what all the variables are, and you’ve already considered them in the plan.
Octavia: Absolutely. Something that I've been trying to say repeatedly to the folks here at Upper Chesapeake is that you guys are really in a good position. One thing I can say is that everyone has been really engaged, really active, really interested in the project itself and wanting to know what do I need to be doing? Where should I be? What are my team’s responsible for? That type of engagement is what really helps us to be successful. We know that the application teams will work hard on the backend in making sure that the technical system is ready. Again, getting everyone on site engaged and active and really having an understanding of what the changes will be makes the major difference. So definitely we bring that into our knowledge base for this go live.
Host: Great. Well thank you Octavia and good luck with the implementation.
Octavia: Thank you. Good luck.
Host: Alright. That’s Octavia Johnson, activities manage for University of Maryland Medical System clinical informatics teams. You're listening to the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health Hero Podcast.