Booth: Welcome back to The Epic Guys. Stephen, what’s the most common question you get about Epic?
Stair: Oh, are you insane to take this job? That’s pretty much it. Or, where do your amazing acting skills come from? Really, right now? I kind of want to know too, why are we in the matrix?
Booth: Yeah, those are all great questions. I was thinking more of a real question about the Epic Journey and what our providers might be wondering about.
Stair: Well, I’ve got one for you. Alright. I hear this all the time. What’s going to happen to our old data when we move to Epic? Are we going to have to log in to another system to find it? Are we going to open up blank charts? What’s going to happen?
Booth: That is a good question. Especially since so many of us will be coming from different EHRs. None of us want to open up a blank note on the first day of go-live. That would not be cool.
Stair: Stu, believe it or not, we’ve been working on this exact solution for over a year. Our conversion teams have done a great job, and we are on schedule to get the vast majority of our patient data into Epic when we go live. Let’s take a look at how it’s going to work.
Booth: Okay, yeah, and that kind of explains why we have the matrix behind us. We’re talking data today. When we talk about moving our legacy data into Epic, there are two terms we need to know. Data migration is the process of converting data from our old systems directly into Epic. This means our old notes, patient labs, imaging results, pathology reports, immunizations, et cetera will all show up right in our Epic workflow on day one of go-live, so we don’t have to go anywhere else to see it.
Stair: That sounds great, Stu. You know we have a lot of data going back decades in our old systems. How much will we migrate over?
Booth: Great question. The answer is, “It depends.” We’ve been thinking about this a lot based on Epic’s best practices, our data conversion team, and our clinical advisory groups. Some data like notes and labs, we will bring the past three years into Epic. Items like pathology, endoscopy reports, and immunizations will be up to 10 years, and there will be many other data elements with their own timelines. But don’t worry – older information will still be available at the click of a button.
Stair: So, how will we see that older information, like if I need a radiology report or a clinic note from six years ago?
Booth: This is the second term we need to know: data archive. We’ll be archiving every bit of a patient’s data going back 10 years stored in a single location, accessible right from the patient’s storyboard with one click. This archived information will be easy to sort by type and date in a format similar to the previous EHRs.
Stair: Okay, that’s really good news. So, I can see several years of patient data right in Epic where I’m working. Then if I need something older, I can go back to the archive.
Booth: Yes.
Stair: Very cool.
Booth: Yes, now there is one other term we need to be aware of called abstraction. When a patient’s problem list, medications, allergies, and immunizations come over from the old system, they need to be reconciled before they officially go into the chart. This is something that’s done with any go-live, and we’ve done it before. We don’t want providers doing all this during their clinics. So, we’re working on a plan to make this happen well prior to go-live. More to come.
Stair: Stu, you can imagine this is not a real easy job. Labs have different ranges of normal notes, and different formats and different systems. We’re working with a lot of experts in this area to help us, and it may not be perfect, but providers need to know. This is a huge priority for us with the Epic implementation. We want you to be successful on that first day of go-live and have everything you need in the chart.
Booth: That’ll be very helpful for the Emergency Department and the hospital as well. So, hopefully this gives us all a little peace of mind about a common question related to Epic. Stephen and I are going to log out of the matrix now, but we will see you next time.
