Custom Demo Environment Accelerates EHR Adoption

Background and Challenge

While embarking on a complex, multi-phase Epic implementation, the University of Vermont Health Network (UVMHN) needed to increase user engagement and adoption at new sites, while simultaneously optimizing EHR system use at existing sites. With training staff and resources fully engaged in implementation activities, project leaders wanted to minimize disruption by keeping the active training environment stable and separate, and limiting involvement from busy members of the training and analyst teams.

Solution

One month before go-live of their new Epic EHR, UVMHN partnered with Tegria to design and build a sustainable, independent demo and training environment that included end-to-end workflows and used clinically robust patient examples. The compact timeline was essential to the project and required an expert team with an advanced, niche skill set to assess needs, plan end-to-end workflows, and create a custom Epic build quickly and proficiently.

Initial work centered around developing an EHR environment strategy to align the build structure with the needs and workflow of clinical staff. Guided by this strategy, the Tegria team executed the build and configured system settings to the needs of clinicians and staff. To ensure the newly expanded demo team could execute clear, successful, and engaging demos that would increase end-user confidence and readiness, the Tegria team created a complete toolkit to prepare, evaluate, and guide Informatics staff through the process.

Environment Strategy

Tegria’s team of experts:

• Conducted SME interviews to identify the demo team’s needs and prioritize content for the initial environment build
  
• Collaborated with client technical resources to create an environment structure, refresh schedule, and data courier connections for efficient long-term maintenance
  
• Developed five end-to-end patient scenarios to be built in the environment, including clinic visits, emergency admissions, interfacility transfers, and specialty workflows

Build Execution

Tegria’s team of experts:

• Configured system settings to maximize the efficiency and versatility of the environment, including facility structure, users, and providers, while improving the quality of the demos to meet the diverse needs of UVMHN
  
• Created 75 unique patients to support end-to-end clinical demos across applications

Demo Toolkit

Tegria’s team of experts:

• Documented the environment build using standard training tools for transition to the client’s environment lead
  
• Inventoried each patient example in a patient library
  
• Created demo scripts for each patient scenario
  
• Established a credentialing process and quality assurance framework for expanded use of the environment