“eRecord Project Powers URMC Strategic Plan”
For the latest details on eRecord, view the project's comprehensive website (you must be on a URMC network to view this site).
Today, numerous providers deliver health care across a variety of settings, creating new communication and patient safety challenges. Our ability to realize the goals enumerated in our overall 2007-2012 Strategic Plan – especially, enhancing the quality and safety of patient care, and growing our signature disease and science research programs into national magnets – hinges on our ability to communicate information across our health system. This challenge in turn rests squarely on the extent to which URMC can truly harness comprehensive, integrated IT (information technology) solutions that foster collaboration and streamline work, making IT a strategic investment for the years to come.
In this vein, URMC has devoted nearly two years to intensive planning, budget approval and vendor selection, and is now actively working to build and deploy an integrated electronic medical record (EMR) system at Strong Memorial and Highland hospitals by the end of 2011. This $49 million project – formerly known as the Clinical Transformation Project and now renamed “eRecord” – aims to bring URMC’s health information technology infrastructure on par with that of the nation’s top academic medical centers. Ultimately, eRecord is anticipated to better connect caregivers, empowering them to provide safer, more efficient, more patient-centric care.
The project’s keystone is a single, shared acute care EMR that will serve both Strong and Highland hospitals. Regardless of patients’ point of entry, a comprehensive view of all their information will be at the fingertips of all URMC caregivers – under one unifying patient number. eRecord initially will roll-out to both hospitals’ inpatient units, where it will replace the current clinical information system (CIS), as well as the information systems presently serving both hospitals’ EDs, pharmacies and oncology departments.
Down the road – possibly in the next three to five years – several remaining key hospital departments will be migrated to the eRecord system (likely cardiology, peri-op, transplant, OBGYN, anesthesia and radiology).
Advancing Responsibly
At the project’s start, URMC leaders engaged consultants at Deloitte, who reiterated that this project is absolutely imperative if URMC is to continue to compete nationally for talented recruits and governmental research funding. And since this technology change represents such a massive undertaking – and ultimately, since its success hinges on the extent to which affected users embrace these new solutions – URMC leaders have conducted a thorough planning process. URMC tapped a 200-person, multi-disciplinary Provider Advisory Committee to gather critical, front-line insight into how (and how much) faculty and staff rely on clinical information technology tools to perform their jobs (see accompanying chart for goals jointly identified by user groups and leadership). This advisory committee wrapped up a rigorous, 6-month selection process, unanimously recommending Epic Systems as its top-choice vendor partner. Contract negotiations with this Wisconsin-based software solutions company were finalized in September 2009.
Scaling Back Initial Scope
Like many capital projects slated to start this year, URMC leaders – in light of the bleak national economic forecast – carefully re-analyzed the financial feasibility of the project, ultimately deciding to scale back the project’s initial scope by 20 to 25 percent (read about the included components, here). URMC hopes to secure $8 million for the project through the $19 billion pot of federal stimulus money earmarked by President Obama for revamping health care technology and recordkeeping nationwide.
Even so, the project is marching ahead, and more than 80 clinicians and staff are currently knee-deep in training and certification to learn the ins and outs of the selected software solution from Epic. And beginning in January, an additional 300 clinicians from throughout Strong and Highland hospitals will meet regularly to review and refine eRecord’s specific system components. Once approved, components will immediately be incorporated into the system, followed by a period of testing and staff training. eRecord is expected to launch in early March 2011 at Strong Memorial; an October “go-live” date is tentatively planned for Highland Hospital.
Keeping Staff Informed, Turn by Turn
Faculty and staff input and support is paramount to the eRecord project’s success. That’s why, in an effort to better engage faculty and staff and more clearly identify the project, we’ve created a catchy name (eRecord) and graphic identity. Going forward, you’ll see this new look associated with all eRecord project communications, and eventually, the icon will be used as the desktop shortcut you’ll find on your computer screen when eRecord goes live in 2011.
Finally, to keep you up-to-date at every step, a comprehensive website (you must be on a URMC network to view this site) is now available, providing the latest project updates, plus FAQs, videos, a timeline and much more. Perhaps most importantly, we continue to value your input and invite you to submit ideas and questions to the eRecord team at isd_helpdesk@urmc.rochester.edu.
