It’s a project of great magnitude, but it’s something that will truly help patients at both Elliot Health System and Southern New Hampshire Health! On December 5, Southern New Hampshire Health will go-live with Epic. Elliot Health System will undergo a major upgrade.
Nearly 1,000 employees across SolutionHealth have been working day-in and day-out to complete the EpicONE project.
“Employees from IT, to clinical staff, to registration have been working extra hours. Not just one to two hours a week. Many are putting in an extra 10 to 20 hours a week. You name it, every department is working extra hours, weekends, and nights,” Alexander Petron, DO, Chief Medical Information Officer at SolutionHealth, Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Elliot Health System, and a practicing pediatrician, explains. “So, it’s a monumental effort, we are all working diligently to get the project live in a safe and productive manner. The group is aggressively working towards our deadlines and our goals.”
The go-live date was originally scheduled for early November, but Dr. Petron says the deadline had to be extended in order to ensure a safe implementation. He says any time you implement a medical record of this magnitude there is always a bump in the road.
But the hard work is worth it! A key benefit of Epic is “one patient, one chart.” That means each patient within SolutionHealth, no matter if their appointment is scheduled at Elliot Health System or Southern New Hampshire Health, will have just one record that all their providers can access. “Clinically we are very well positioned to care for our patients in a way that’s unique because we have one shared record across the continuum,” Dr. Petron says.
Already, Elliot Health System and Southern New Hampshire Health have worked collectively to create a new EpicONE clinical program. The clinical teams from both campuses teamed up and put together a sepsis screening tool to help both hospitals manage sepsis.
“I am very thankful to the staff throughout both organizations. From the bottom of my heart, I appreciate all the effort they have put in. It’s more than just the people coming together, it’s the people and the technology coming together to better the care of our patients,” Petron explains.
