Earlier this yr, Kaiser Permanente accomplished one of many largest IT initiatives within the well being system’s 80-year historical past.
The well being system consolidated 12 separate cases of its EHR system throughout the state of California into simply two — one for Northern California and one for Southern California. These two giant cutovers — which concerned about 40 million affected person data — had been every accomplished in underneath three hours, with no single canceled appointment or delayed process.
Kaiser’s EHR consolidation exhibits that large-scale integrations might be completed with out compromising affected person care, famous Neil Cowles, the well being system’s chief data and know-how officer.
Kaiser had discovered itself working six EHR cases in Northern California and 6 in Southern California attributable to scalability limitations on the time the methods had been initially deployed, he defined.
“These cases had completely different configurations, workflows and affected person knowledge to suit their native service areas, which created complexity for physicians and care groups,” Cowles acknowledged.
Throughout the cutover, inpatients had been just about discharged after which readmitted into the brand new EHR occasion. This was a technical workflow solely — sufferers didn’t should bodily depart the power, change rooms or expertise any interruption in care, Cowles identified.
By consolidating into simply two cases, Kaiser made duties simpler for clinicians, improved knowledge consistency and enabled extra seamless entry to affected person data throughout services, he famous. Affected person data are centralized, which permits care groups to rapidly retrieve full medical histories — no matter the place the affected person obtained care.
Now, workflows are constant, Cowles added. Clinicians use the identical interface and processes throughout all services of their area, lowering employees confusion and coaching time.
“Finally, this consolidation empowers our care groups to focus extra on affected person care and fewer on navigating complicated methods,” Cowles declared.
Prior to now, when Kaiser had 12 separate EHR cases, any configuration change or code replace needed to be rolled out 12 occasions after which fastidiously synchronized to keep away from inconsistencies or downtime. With the newly consolidated methods, those self same updates are deployed solely twice — which Cowles mentioned reduces complexity, dangers, ongoing upkeep effort and extra IT prices.
The undertaking has additionally resulted in simplified scheduling, as sufferers can extra simply schedule appointments throughout hospitals and medical workplaces, and employees can handle these appointments extra effectively, he identified.
He attributes the success of this consolidation undertaking to the shut alignment between Kaiser’s clinicians, enterprise groups and tech consultants.
“This system workforce practiced an over 600-step plan over 25 occasions. Many groups rehearsed a number of hand-offs and high quality checks to ensure the precise occasion went flawlessly. This achievement was solely attainable as a result of our complete system labored collaboratively, figuring out and agreeing on the crucial measures of success,” Cowles remarked.
He additionally famous that automation performed a crucial function in accelerating the info migration course of. It automated repetitive duties, corresponding to transferring personalization settings and validating knowledge integrity, which helped scale back Kaiser’s deliberate downtime by greater than half-hour.
When planning for the undertaking, Cowles mentioned that the Kaiser’s guideline was easy: shield affected person care and keep away from operational disruption.
To try this, the well being system invested closely in preserving every customers’ expertise. Kaiser migrated particular person knowledge and personalization preferences so seamlessly that the majority employees wanted solely minimal coaching and light-weight change-management assist, Cowles acknowledged.
“We offered focused on-line coaching and real-time consciousness the night time of the cutover, however the true measure of success got here afterward. When leaders rounded on clinics put up–go-live, a number of employees members requested, ‘What cutover?’ That’s precisely the result we aimed for,” he declared.
Picture: Thomas Barwick, Getty Photos
