BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. — Starting Tuesday, patients of United Hospital Center will have better accessibility to their medical files thanks to a new EPIC system.
Brian Cottrill, assistant vice president and assistant CIO of WVU Medicine, said UHC has been utilizing an outdated electronic medical record (EMR) system that was purchased in the 1980s.
Since UHC is a part of WVU Medicine, that system is getting a much needed upgrade, with EPIC going live Aug. 1.
“EPIC is the number one rated electronic medical record and billing system for hospitals and physician practices in the world,” Cottrill said. “So we’re excited to getting to go to the number one system and improve from where we are today.”
The EPIC system also brings patient accessibility to MyWVUChart.com and a corresponding mobile application.
Via the application allows patients to see upcoming and past appointments, lab and test results, a list of medications and even send messages to their physician.
“It’s really a state-of-the-art app for your phone or website to keep up on your health care, and that allows our patients to participate more in their health care, which is what we want them to do,” Cottrill said.
Cottrill says the new system will be of great benefit to patients because it will create one unified record between all of WVU Medicine’s eight hospitals, as well as physician practices that are a part of WVU Medicine.
“What that means is, if a patient would go to a cardiologist in Morgantown, or any specialist, when they come to a physician at United Hospital Center or they get admitted to United Hospital Center, they’ll be able to see all of that record from Morgantown and all of our other system hospitals,” he said.
Cottrill recalls his own father coming into the emergency room at UHC before systems such as EPIC were in place.
“The cardiologist here at UHC wanted to see what his cardiologist had done in Morgantown, but they couldn’t see that so they had to go ahead and do the procedure without knowing his past other than what he was able to tell them,” he said. “But with the new system, they’ll be able to have that instantly so this will speed up care, it will increase patient safety and the quality of care that we can give.”
Staff are currently preparing for the transition, with employees spending anywhere from four to 12 hours in training.
“There’s a lot of different modules,” Cottrill said. “What folks learn in the cath lab is significantly different than what they learn in the cancer, and that’s different from what physicians learn, and that’s different from what the billing clerks learn.”
Despite significant training, Cottrill expects a smooth transition.
“Anytime people need to learn new software there’s a lot to learn, but we have over 100 people coming in to assist at the time of go-live,” he said. “So even if you’ve been trained, if you have a question after we start on Aug. 1, there’s somebody on your unit who is prepared to help you with any questions that you have.”
UHC, along with three other WVU Medicine hospitals, made the American Hospital Association’s “Most Wired List” in July 2016, and Cottrill believes the new system will launch the hospital even further into the technological future.
“There’s only about 300 of those picked out of over 5,000 hospitals in America, so to be in the top six percent or so of hospitals in terms of technology already, and then after we go to EPIC, we’ll even be more advanced,” he said. “It’s going to be a very exciting time for us.”