What is the name of the clinic or department that you represent?
University Medical Center (UMC Tuscaloosa) Sports Medicine
What is your current job role within the clinic or department, and how long have you been in this position?
I’ve been the charge nurse for five years, but I’ve been at UMC for 10 years.
Can you briefly describe the mission and goals of your clinic or department?
Our goal is to treat our patients and get them back to their active and/or pain-free lifestyle.
Are there any differentiators or accomplishments that you’d like to share about your clinic or department?
In my opinion, our clinic functions like a well-oiled machine. We all work very well together, and there’s no such thing as “that’s not my job”. We communicate well and are all able to pick up the slack for anybody who is out. The staff and doctors also have great communication, whether they are in or outside our clinic. We truly work as a team and enjoy being around each other.
What is the impact of Epic on your clinic or department?
Hopefully it will create a more direct way of doing things, as opposed to five different ways to do the same task. We have three new sports medicine fellows each year who are usually learning a new EHR when they join us, and typically they are still learning new things about the system right up until their last day.
How will Epic enhance care for your patients?
My hope is that the patient portal will improve communication with patients and speed up the workflow for providers while in clinic, allowing patients to be seen more quickly.
What are you and your team most looking forward to about our journey to Epic?
Hopefully we will be able to customize things more for our clinic workflow and the parts of patients charts that we are accessing the most. This could streamline things before, during, and after patient visits.