Over the past month and a half, using the experience of David Chou (VP/CIO Children’s Mercy Hospital), Stephen Tokarz (HCI Senior VP, Training & Activation), and Bob Steele (HCI Executive VP, Clinical Services), this blog series has covered all of the aspects of an EHR Go-Live. From pre Go-Live planning and training, to post Go-Live adoption and transition to support mode, the Go-Live process is long, multidimensional, and requires much forethought and detailed planning. If you’re in the process of preparing for your own Go-Live, hopefully you’ve found the information contained within these posts to be helpful and relevant. Of course, if you’d like more information or have specific questions about your own project, we’d enjoy the opportunity to speak with you one-on-one—just look for the form at the bottom of this post!
Today, we’ll be publishing our last chapter of the series. Though less complicated planning-wise than the other topics we’ve covered, security and access issues can nonetheless cause major problems and project delays during Go-Live. It’s pretty straightforward—if your staff can’t get into the EHR system, they’re not going to be able to do their jobs!
1. Logging in
During the rush of Go-Live planning, while your mind is preoccupied with the more complex aspects of the project, it’s easy to let some of the simpler tasks fall by the wayside. One issue that’s often overlooked is the problem of improper security protocol blocking users from logging into the system. Because different users will be allowed differing levels of access within the system, security mapping will need to be specific to each user.
Prior to Go-Live, you’ll want to ensure that each user has the correct level of access in the system. To double check this, have each of your staff log into the mirrored version of the production environment (sometimes referred to as the “sup” environment) to make sure that everything is good to go for Go-Live day. It’s often a good idea to address this during training, while you have a captive audience. Once Go-Live kicks off, you need your staff available to deal with more important workflow concerns, system improvements, and other change management issues—not trying to figure out how to log into the EHR.
2. SWAT Team
Your Technical SWAT (Smiling, Willing, Available, Trained) Team will be the first line of defense against security and access issues during Go-Live. Even with your best efforts to avoid these problems by having users log in prior to Go-Live, invariably someone will show up on the big day and have trouble getting into the system. For this reason, you’ll need to have the SWAT team prepared to help staff gain access to the EHR.
The SWAT team should be prepared to be on-site on the day of Go-Live and through the end of the first week. A typical schedule will be set up to include two sets of 12-hour shift rotations. Be sure that the SWAT team is available on the first and second weekends of the Go-Live as well. When they’re not busy helping users with access issues, the SWAT team should be prepared to handle printer/scanning problems, both common issues during Go-Live.
Thank you for following along with our blog series over the past weeks—we hope it’s been informative and perhaps provided you with some peace of mind. Quick access to each of the chapters can be found here in the introductory post to the series, if you’d like to review any of the topics previously covered. And, as mentioned in the beginning of the post, we’d welcome a personal discussion with you about any Go-Lives, or other EHR projects, that you may have upcoming—just look below.
Though this particular blog series has come to a close, you’ll still find all kinds of useful EHR topics posted on our blog several times a week. If you’re interested in receiving the posts as soon as they’re published subscribe below.