Readiness for Change
This week, Peter Grimaldi, senior director of the PA department, describes his experience participating in various readiness activities and how HSS is preparing for transformational change.
Readiness for change is a critical precursor to the successful implementation and adoption of Epic at HSS. It is important that everyone understands ahead of time how to be prepared and is ready for the new system and new ways of doing things. As with any major initiative that impacts the HSS family, partnership and collaboration are instrumental to our overall success.
Members from Epic, our HSS IT teams, our Advisory Committees, our readiness work groups, and each of our subject matter experts have been and will continue to meet regularly to ensure that we are building a system that supports enhanced clinical and financial workflows. Readiness workgroup members are currently participating in policy review and revisions to ensure that policies accurately reflect workflows and documentation in the future state with Epic. Workgroups are also mapping out plans to ensure that departments understand how workflows will be changing prior to Epic training where staff and prescribers (MD, DO, PA, and NP) will learn how to document in the new system.
I have had the unique pleasure to participate in a relatively new program recommended by our Epic colleagues in Verona, Wisconsin – physicians and physician assistants educating other prescribers. This is similar to the model we will use at HSS to teach how to use Epic. There are a handful of HSS PAs and physicians who meet regularly to learn Epic in preparation for training others how to use Epic in the context of their daily workflow. Having HSS PAs and physicians as educators will allow us to streamline and make the upcoming education process more efficient.
There has been an extraordinary organizational commitment to design the system to be transformational and not to simply automate current processes. We have been focused on involving representatives of all stakeholder and user groups throughout the design and build process, which will help assure the Epic system will be built to reflect our unique needs and high standards of care. Aside from giving us a chance to really think about all our processes and redesign things in the best way possible, transformation and the Epic implementation is giving people across the organization a chance to work together in ways they haven’t previously. It’s creating a more team-based feeling for the whole hospital.
From my very first Epic meetings, enhancing and standardizing workflows stood out to me as an area of opportunity for HSS. The Epic implementation and corresponding Transformation efforts will help HSS build a more consistent experience across all of our hospital services that lives up to the HSS brand. For example, IPOC, the interdisciplinary plan of care workgroup, has been working on standardizing elements of every prescriber to prescriber handoff, including verbal and written tool handoff, and designing a workflow that mandates a clinical rationale through post op med rec when a prescriber chooses not to order a patient’s home medication. Standardization and establishing expectations amongst prescriber groups and services with IPOC will have a positive impact on how we provide effective and efficient patient care.
There is no question that Epic will have a major impact on how we provide and document patient care. What I think I will like best about Epic is the coordination of care with all the other physicians and clinicians in the system – better communication will ultimately improve patient care. It will be much easier to get to everything and not have to switch between multiple systems to find information.
I want to personally acknowledge my enthusiasm for our transformation and the role that each of us plays in doing what’s best for our patients. I have thoroughly enjoyed participating in transformation and readiness activities to not only observe the development of the system but also influence the development process. I want to thank everyone who has played a role in developing our plans for Epic and transformation initiatives. This has been a true team effort.
As a reminder, staff are now able to submit questions related to the Epic project directly from the Epic intranet site. Staff will receive a response from a member of the Epic team and a library of frequently asked questions and responses will be maintained on the site.
One Response to “Readiness for Change”
Great blog, Peter. People often fear change. It makes us uncomfortable. But at HSS we embrace change. That is how we are pioneers in surgery, rehabilitation, radiology… the list goes on. We are constantly challenging ourselves to improve our systems and discover better ways of helping people. Epic should be no different. Clearly the Epic team is bringing the HSS culture to this next chapter in our Hospital’s history. I hope your enthusiasm is contagious throughout the staff as we make this exciting transition.