Challenge and Results

Two years after completing its system-wide Epic EHR implementation, our customer’s master training environment (MST) was out of sync with the live production environment and needed to be rebuilt prior to an Epic version upgrade and the launch of Storyboard, Epic’s new vertical workspace layout.

The health system’s massive EHR implementation and sophisticated clinical patient scenarios meant the training environment was in high demand and in need of continuous tweaking and new patient build. While largely unavoidable, the infrastructure build was not consistently updated as they went live, resulting in missing or broken build, erroneous patients, and obsolete patient scenarios. The customer’s Clinical Systems Education team wanted to invest in improving MST and better their relationship with the providers, but some of their Instructional Designers (IDs) were experiencing an MST rebuild for the first time and needed targeted support.

Solution

The healthcare organization was seeking a partner who intimately understood the Epic-provided tools and processes and knew how to adapt those processes to fit their unique build and organizational structure. They needed experts who could both drive the rebuild planning and provide guidance and support for the build and troubleshooting in order to allow the system to hit its upgrade and Storyboard deadlines.

And there’s more. The customer’s wish list also included: reducing patient numbers, decreasing patient refresher time (Mitosis), efficiently synchronizing the training environment with PRD, and creating a master patient library within a two and a half month timeframe. With a successful upgrade and Storyboard transition at stake, the customer wanted to take advantage of this “reset” and enter the coming year with sustainable solutions for its entire training program.

Pre-Copy Tasks and Rebuild Strategy

The customer needed a phased approach to accommodate a build that stretched across three time zones and multiple system locations. They also needed sufficient analysis of the master patient needs and pre-copy task management to educate the training team before the rebuild got underway.

We started by:

• Conducting check-ins with each ID to assess readiness for MST build
• Reviewing identified patient needs and issues
• Tracking pre-copy task understanding and completion
• Providing education on MST build tools

Rebuild Execution

As the training environment rebuild took shape, the customer needed to build and verify the vast amounts of associated training curriculum in a short timeframe. They also needed a strong content management foundation to ensure documentation/Cookbook maintenance was feasible and user-friendly friendly for various positions.

Together, we:

• Established testing best practices for issue logging and resolution
• Provided support for MST stream as it went live
• Worked with the customer’s communications to educate staff on the new Playground environment experience and the new Patient Library
• Guided rapid escalation of any issues
• Fully transitioned ownership of processes and documentation to the identified Environment Lead

Results

In addition to hitting key upgrade deadlines and solving costly server environment issues, our customer’s MST rebuild served as a catalyst for aligning their curriculum, training environment, and educational needs while providing more site-specific training scenarios across the enterprise.

1. Provided location-specific test patients across all three geographic regions without inflating the number of master patients or patient load time
2. Reduced master patient count by more than 150 patients
3. Reduced patient duplicates by more than 15,000
4. Cut Mitosis server refresh time in half
5. Delivered updated Application Cookbooks, a new Master ANN, Mitosis Minor spreadsheets, an MST Rebuild Tracker, and a Rebuild Issue Tracker
6. Created a public, searchable Patient Library to identify all patient scenarios available in the PLY