Rebuilt Epic Master Training Environment Improves Clinical Education

Background and Challenge

Two years after completing its systemwide Epic EHR implementation, a healthcare system’s Master Training (MST) Environment was out of sync with the live production environment and needed to be rebuilt prior to an Epic version upgrade.

The healthcare system’s massive EHR implementation and sophisticated clinical patient scenarios meant the training environment was in high demand and in need of continuous tweaking and new patient build. While largely unavoidable, the infrastructure build was not consistently updated as they went live, resulting in missing or broken build, erroneous patients, and obsolete patient scenarios. The Clinical Systems Education team wanted to invest in improving their MST and better their relationship with the providers, but some of their Instructional Designers (IDs) were experiencing an MST rebuild for the first time and needed targeted support.

Leaders also wanted to reduce patient numbers, decrease patient refresher time (Mitosis), efficiently synchronize the training environment with PRD, and create a master patient library within a two-and-a-half-month time frame. They sought a partner with intimate understanding of Epic-provided tools and processes and how to adapt those processes to fit their unique build and organizational structure. They needed experts who could both drive the rebuild planning and provide guidance and support for the build and troubleshooting to allow the system to hit its upgrade deadlines.

Solution

Tegria experts designed a phased approach to accommodate work in three time zones and multiple system locations. Tasks included:

• Conducting check-ins with each ID to assess readiness for MST rebuild
• Reviewing identified patient needs and issues
• Tracking pre-copy task understanding and completion
• Providing education on MST build tools

As the training environment rebuild took shape, the customer needed to build and verify vast amounts of associated training curriculum in a short timeframe. They also needed a strong content management foundation to ensure documentation/Cookbook maintenance was feasible and user-friendly for various positions.

Tegria experts worked with the customer to establish testing best practices for issue logging and resolution and provided support for MST stream as it went live. They also collaborated to educate staff on the new Playground environment experience and the new Patient Library, and to fully transition ownership of processes and documentation to the identified Environment Lead.