Before going live, there is months of preparation that is required for Epic’s installation. However, there still can be many challenges and issues during or after the implementation.
The chief technology officer of uniprint, Mr. Fu, gathered information and discussed about the past experiences of successful implementations from 10 of the best Epic EMR Software managers, consultants and trainers. They concluded the discussion with following tips:
 

  1. There should be a support service system with healthcare IT experts equipped with clinical and medical knowledge.
  2. While working on the front end users’ workflows it is necessary to engage all the shareholders, which usually work behind the scenes like coding professionals and finance experts.
  3. There should be a proper detailed description of each and every step during the project designing phase.
  4. When the new system is adopted, the data from all the old systems must be transferred to the new system to avoid any clash and avoid payment for both systems and eventually running out of the budget.
  5. The staff must be completely trained about their job descriptions in the new software before implementation. Apart from that regular feedback sessions should also be conducted to point out and resolve any issues for the satisfaction of the user.
  6. Proper customization of the EHR should be done by the workflow professionals of the organizations in collaboration with the vendors before going live. After that, the project leaders can instruct the staff clearly about their tasks on the system.
  7. The organizations should allocate a certain amount of resources for the training of the staff, they should be gone through real life patient scenarios and must be taught how to deal with them.
  8. All the organizations should always try to go according to the schedule and meet all the deadlines. But if you miss anything out, then its fine, you can add what missed out, and resolve certain problems after the implementation.
  9. Going live can give a lot of stress. But to reduce that stress, organizations should always be transparent and should work on empowering the users and hospital staff at their first priority.