Worcester Business Journal

14 Worcester Business Journal | October 15, 2018 | wbjournal.com A year after launching Epic, UMass Memorial will update its electronic records F O C U S I N F O R M A T I O N T E C H N O L O G Y BY GRANT WELKER Worcester Business Journal News Editor A $650M start A year ago, UMass Memorial Health Care made a belated leap into using electronic patient records, capping off a four-year planning period and a $650-million investment. "It took years of planning just to get to the point of last October," Mark Su- grue, associate chief nursing officer for the Worcester-based health network. More than a year aer its Oct. 1, 2017 rollout, however, UMass officials says they have seen the benefit of such a wide-scale investment at its hospitals and in physicians' offices. Now, nurses or doctors can instantly see, for example, an emergency room patient has an important allergy or had recently seen a doctor about a relevant medical issue. Before, a provider might have to call the patient's primary care physician or even have records faxed. Aer an intial adjustment period by nonprofit's 12,000 medical providers, the electronic records system – known as Epic – has brought clear benefits, said Tim Tarnowski, the chief information officer for UMass Memorial. "We've settled in nicely," he said. An entirely new system Epic replaced what had been 120 dif- ferent records systems – some electronic, some still on paper – from across UMass Medical Center and other medical offices in the system. Combing through an uncountable number of patient records to digitize them was a herculean effort spurring UMass to hire 125 new em- ployees to handle the upgrade. UMass appeared to be late to adopt an electronic system across its whole operation. A 2015 survey by the Na- tional Center for Health Statistics found 95 percent of office-based physicians in Massachusetts used an electronic health or medical records system. But many went digital only fairly re- cently. A report last year from industry trade publication Medical Economics found 38 percent of physicians had ad- opted electronic records within the past four years, and the average time since making the switch was six years. For UMass, going digital meant a long planning process and a major finan- cial commitment at a time when hospi- tals are as pressed as ever to balance rising costs for care with patient needs. Roughly 1,200 doctors, nurses and other providers helped choose Epic as a vendor and then helped design what the program would look like when tailored for UMass. "For an organization like ours, it takes a lot of courage, right up to the board of directors, to sign off on something like that because it's such a huge investment," Sugrue said. ose entering old patient records into the system – with everything from allergies and medications to records of visits – had to ensure every detail was right. Tests like X-rays were scanned. "We don't have the wiggle room of a high failure rate with this," Sugrue said. Keeping records safe With all patient records now comput- erized, problems with accessibility are solved. But another potential problem arises: the or other malicious acts. A 2017 Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology found 10 percent of patients still withhold giving some information to health care providers because of privacy or security concerns. Two out of three patients said they were concerned about unauthorized viewing of their records when the records are exchanged between parties. UMass Memorial itself has had issues. In September, UMass was ordered to pay the state $230,000 aer complaints of two data breaches exposing personal and health records of more than 15,000 pa- tients. Attorney General Maura Healey's office said two former employees of the hospital accessed patients' personal and health information for fraudulent purposes, including opening cell phone accounts and new credit cards. UMass said the incidents took place Tim Tarnowski, CIO, UMass Memorial PHOTO/WBJ FILE PHOTO Last year, in advance of its Epic launch, UMass Memorial held training with staff on how to use the electronic system during different medical situations.

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