BWHC leaders visit the Epic headquarters in Wisconsin.

On June 25 and 26, members of the Brigham and Women’s Health Care (BWHC) leadership team headed to Wisconsin to visit the headquarters of Epic, the health care software company working with Partners to develop and implement Partners eCare. The group consisted of representatives from BWH, Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital (BWFH), and the Brigham and Women’s Physicians Organization (BWPO), as well as Partners eCare Executive Director O’Neil Britton, MD, and Vice President of Operations Dan Gross.

The goals of the visit were to obtain a better understanding of the latest version of the Epic system, ask questions about Partners implementation, and understand how best to make the transition to this new electronic health record system.

“Partners eCare is a critical strategy for us to move forward to meet the needs of our patients and be ready for an increasingly competitive environment,” said Allen Smith, MD, MS, BWPO president.

The group discussed BWHC training, best practices, capacity planning, improvements Epic will make in BWHC workflows, and Partners eCare-centric priorities for the coming year. Then they worked with Epic executives, developers and management teams to learn how the system can streamline and improve care coordination across entities, how clinicians can best leverage the system and how the system will continue to evolve and develop over time at BWHC. The Epic team stressed that training and go-live support are key to a successful implementation and maximizing the benefits of the system.

“I have been enthusiastic about our transition to a shared medical record system, but the trip to Epic allowed me to envision what a powerful tool it can become,” said Margaret Duggan, MD, chief medical officer at BWFH. “Implementation will allow our clinicians to care for patients in new and efficient ways in the clinic, in the hospital, and from home. I truly believe this will help us all be more effective in caring for our collective patients together.”

BWH and BWFH will go live with the Epic clinical and revenue cycle applications on May 30, 2015. All BWHC ambulatory clinics will also go live with revenue applications on that date; approximately 314 BWHC physicians in 23 practices will begin using the ambulatory clinical applications for orders, documentation and charge capture. A second wave of 78 ambulatory practices and 1,030 physicians will go live with ambulatory clinical applications on July 30, 2015.

For more information, visit partnersecare.partners.org.