Introduction

Organizations are increasingly looking to plan the implementation of Epic either in one go or through various phases to make the most of the potential advantages that Epic offers. The meticulous Epic planning & Implementation often falls short of the desired expectations of the organization once the system goes live.

Stakeholders are often left scratching their heads as to how can a proven system known to deliver success with a proven track record of bringing efficiency and effectiveness to the operations of healthcare organizations falls short when healthcare organizations transition towards the live Epic system.

Is it the system itself or the steps & strategies undertaken to take Epic live are often not properly planned and executed?

The answer more often than not is the latter rather than the former.

This guide will shed light on the importance of Epic Go-Live Planning.

More often than not extremely well-planned, resourced, and financially supported implementations are unable to paper over the cracks when the system goes live. There are numerous reasons why Epic Go Live is often not successful ranging from inadequate planning and improper identification of financial & human resources.

Along with a lack of proper buy-in from the relevant stakeholders to not properly examining your options with your identified vendor and an experienced project manager or resource to not only look over the Epic planning & implementation but also help to identify the right time for the health care organization to go live with the Epic system.

Key Resources Necessary for Go Live

Partnering with the right technology partner is crucial, but it is even more crucial to identify resources that will help your organization to make the transition to go live a resounding success. Therefore, earmarking the best available resources to the roles that suit them and most importantly will be vital in helping to successfully plan & implement EPIC and subsequently GO LIVE.

The trainer’s work actually begins once the Go-Live has begun providing the trainer the opportunity to shine and showcase their expertise. The trainer’s presence and interaction with the users fill them with confidence and serve as a catalyst in helping to get the new system approved across the board.

Training Manager is equivalent to a project manager, looking after the whole transition and its subsequent success.  The training manager has to not only oversee the whole project but also ensure that they are able to cultivate an enabling environment where people can embrace new processes and fully become accustomed to them.

Characteristics of a Principal Trainer include:

• The training manager should have the necessary expertise for training and excellent communication skills.
• Training Managers should have the capacity to create lesson plans by gathering requisite information.
• Clear understanding regarding the healthcare process of your organization.
• Ability to evaluate the performance of Credentialed Trainers and provide relevant feedback.
• A clear understanding of your organization’s culture and the processes involved.

The Principal Trainer reports directly to the Training Manager helping to integrate the necessary workflow into the lesson plans, building the training environment, and managing the Credentialed Trainers. Having effective communication skills to build the team and properly convey any shortcomings to Training Manager when things are not going to plan.

• The Credentialed Trainer is tasked with conducting the designed training sessions using the materials and tools provided by the Principal Trainer.

It is imperative for healthcare organizations to find the right balance between the use of internal and external resources. Collaborating with the right technology partner can help to provide necessary insights for your resources helping them bridge the gap created through the new system and ensure a successful GO Live process.

Successful Adoption & Optimization

To ensure a successful adoption & optimization of the EPIC planning & implementation by making sure that your super users have the capacity to fully support other users.

For this concerted effort has to be made to ensure that your super users identified actually have the capacity to take on this responsibility. This can only be achieved by providing well-thought-out training programs that fully acquaint the super user with all the intricacies of the new system. Furthermore, super users are able to transfer their knowledge to other users by successfully communicating with others across the board.

Super users can be provided the necessary skills provided they are made an integral part of the process from the beginning to ensure their participation and input in the training curriculum along with the designs, and also the workflows expected of them in the new environment.

Similarly, the organization’s senior leadership is going to have tons of questions about what they’re supposed to do at go-live.  Therefore, it is of utmost importance to not only keep them in the loop regarding what is going to transpire but also educate them regarding their role and position with regard to the perception they are to create for the successful planning and implementation of the new system and it subsequently going live.

For this to happen the leadership has to be extremely proactive and hands-on in not only embracing the change but also showcasing to everyone involved with the organization that the planning and implementation process will bear fruit and the resultant GO Live process will be a guaranteed success.

Leadership’s role along with important resources leading from the front is crucial but health care organizations ultimate GO Live success will hinge on building a team that can successfully adopt the lessons from all the training imparted and subsequently implement them going forward. Hence, it is critical that the healthcare organization along with its technology partner create a team that is capable of taking ownership of the new challenges and devising successful solutions to those challenges.

The Right Technology Partner

In order to create a robust plan for EPIC and its subsequent implementation it is crucial that your healthcare organization partners up with the right organization that is well-versed with the peculiarities related to the planning & implementation process of EPIC. Not only would this partnership help you provide crucial insights that would be instrumental in shaping the success of the implementation but also ensure that your organization and its stakeholder are able to take ownership of the EPIC system ensuring sustainable growth in the years ahead.

Finding the right technology partner can be crucial especially when you are not sure of what to expect from the EPIC system and how best to articulate its benefits across the board in order to get the required buy-in for the change to be successful.

Therefore, your right technology partner should not only be well versed with the technical expertise but also have the capacity to impart required training and skills to the users; most importantly help the healthcare organization to get all the stakeholders to embrace the proposed change so that the paradigm shift is smooth and across the board.

Vertelligence

Virtelligence is a Healthcare IT (HIT) and Business IT consulting firm that offers solution advisory and consulting and staffing services to organizations throughout the globe. With almost 20 years of information technology expertise, Virtelligence offers services across the full range of Healthcare IT and IT Vendor products and delivers solutions tailored to address the specific business needs of each and every client.

We differentiate from our competition by priding ourselves on our ability to excel in service delivery, turnaround time, and follow-through.  We offer our clients experienced resources at competitive rates and we understand the importance of your bottom line.

Virtelligence IT Expertise

Founded in 1998, Virtelligence has 18 years of experience in the IT staffing industry.

95% of our clients return to us for repeat business, and 100% are poised to provide outstanding recommendations. Our customer loyalty numbers far exceed industry norms.

80% of our consultants are our direct employees.

Virtelligence is a Minority Business Enterprise (MBE); certified by State and Federal Agencies (SBA) in the United States.

Our offshore office has a staff of over 30 support specialists who are working during the hours when our Minnesota team is out of office, which effectively gives us a 24-hour recruiting presence. We’re constantly working for you.

We have a strong local presence, as well as a national network of skilled consultants who are available to fill specific and niche roles within your IT strategy.

We have developed and leverage very lean and efficient staff augmentation model with very thin margins as we keep our overhead low and we pass along those saving to our client.

All of our recruiters come from technology solution delivery background so that they can do rigid technical interviews to ensure the consultant is best fit for the job.

Virtelligence EPIC expertise

Virtelligence has Epic implementation experience with over 150 successful major implementations over the past 20 years from ‘big bang’ enterprise-wide Epic implementations to phased implementations.

Experience with for profit and not for profit IDN’s, Academic Medical Centers, Children’s Hospitals, Public & Community Hospitals, and Physician Associations across North America, Canada, and the Middle East.

Virtelligence has a long relationship with Epic having maintained an active Agreement with them since 2005.

200+ staff including certified and vendor credentialed resources.

Superior Epic Talent and Credentials

In addition to our current staff we have a very large pool of experienced, trained professionals, who have solid Epic experience across the enterprise suite of applications from Revenue Cycle to Clinical and Specialty modules as well as Technical and Training resources.

Experienced resources at very competitive rates. Each of our principal consultants has over 20 years of relevant healthcare IT experience.

We differentiate from our competition by taking a 360° view of Epic implementations.  This approach ensures we look at the Epic implementation from a “holistic” point of view ensuring all requirements are understood and documented to manage/mitigate implementation risk.

Recognition

Due to its rewarding workplace and lasting business partnerships, Virtelligence was recognized by the following:

• HCI-100 Top 100 Healthcare IT Companies by Healthcare Informatics Magazine
• Great Places to Work the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal
• INC5000 – by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest-growing private companies in America
• FAST-50, Fastest growing private companies in Minnesota by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal
• National Minority Supplier Diversity Council (NMSDC) registered Minority Owned Business

What sets Virtelligence apart from its Competition?

• In-house Instructor-led Training: Our training team organizes in-house courses on various new technologies. Courses are taught by either our employees or by experts invited from the industry or academia.
• Partner Training: We have partnered with many of the leading software product companies, such as IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft. Each of these companies offers courses in which our employees are eligible to enroll.
• University Training: We will pay for relevant courses being taught at nearby Universities.
• Self-Training: Our Company maintains its own library of books, videos and CBTs that employees can check out and use for self-learning.
• Cross Training: Our resources are cross-trained in mainframe to client-server to web-enabled applications. They can work with large-end transactional systems that cross many technology platforms. Many of our customers consider this a great strength because it provides us with the ability to look at our client’s needs from many angles. We can help them integrate all their technologies to create a robust working environment.

Virtelligence Key Service Offerings

• Full Lifecycle Implementation Services
• System Planning, Design, Build, Testing
• Revenue Cycle
• Clinical & Ancillary Systems
• Technical, Integration & Reporting
• Legacy Systems Support & Backfill Staffing
• Project Management & PMO
• eHealth
• Training, Go-Live & Activation Services
• Post-Live Solutions
• Stabilization, Optimization, Upgrades
• Community Connect
• Project Staff Augmentation

Core Vendor Expertise

• Epic
• McKesson
• Cerner (Soarian)
• Allscripts
• NextGen
• MEDITECH

Conclusion

With a whole host of resources and solutions available that proclaim to be the definitive answer to your EPIC planning & implementation, healthcare organizations continue to struggle in embracing the change when going live. Partnering with the right technology partner is the need of the hour if you want not only to ensure a successful implementation but also earn the trust, support, and ownership of all the relevant stakeholders ensuring that the EPIC system is embraced across the board.

Virtelligence is the right technology partner to ensure that you not only have the very best in technical IT expertise but sound business knowledge and experience to fall back on in order to successfully create a new environment supporting the new EPIC system.

Virtelligence’s motto of keeping clients first and ensuring that they have all the requisite material and training ensures that the transition to the new system is smooth, successful, and within the budgets of our clients.  Virtelligence’s commitment to excellence at every step of the way ensures EPIC planning and implementation for going live is guaranteed success all throughout and for years ahead.