WY Health System Approaches Epic EHR Implementation Completion

Wyoming-based Campbell County Health (CCH) has made progress in its journey to transition away from MEDITECH and go live with an Epic EHR implementation effective on September 16, 2023.

Smaller organizations the size of CCH often do not have the resources or funding to tap the Epic EHR system, but through an affiliation with UCHealth, it was made possible.

“Our affiliation with UCHealth has allowed us to overcome these barriers,” CCH stated in a press release. “UCHealth has been assisting CCH with this daunting but crucial transformation so that we can provide the very best in EHR infrastructure to the Northeast Wyoming community.”

The $8 million Epic EHR implementation is significantly lower than it would be without an affiliate partner, the health system said.

“Comparable healthcare organizations could easily expect to pay double that cost for a solo implementation,” CCH mentioned.

Recently, with the help of UCHealth, CCH completed the “Discovery” phase of the Epic implementation process. During this process, UCHealth spent time at CCH to gain an understanding of its current system and help create a system unique to the organization’s needs.

Currently, the health system is in the “Workflow Walkthrough & Configuration” phase of its implementation, where UCHealth has allowed CCH to experience Epic, ask questions, and seek explanations.

Coming up this winter, CCH will enter the “User & System Readiness” phase of Epic implementation. Throughout this time, “employees will begin to interact with our Epic build. This phase is a time for testing, fixes, modifications, and finalizing our Epic build,” the press release explained.

At the end of this process, CCH aims to gain significant enhancements to the patient and provider experience.

“EHRs are part of the critical infrastructure of modern healthcare facilities. In its most basic form, an EHR is an electronic and real-time version of a patient’s paper chart. EHRs have become much more than simple patient charts over the years.”

“Modern EHRs can contain charting of patient medical history, treatment plans, immunization dates, allergies, and test results. EHRs can also streamline the workflow for providers, provide easy-to-use patient portals, enable online billing, and allow online appointment requests.”

Additionally, the health system plans to improve interoperability and care coordination by implementing Epic.

Better interoperability leads to better patient care; through this switch, patient data can be accessed by thousands of large hospital systems that leverage Epic.

“Epic is among the most robust EHRs and has quickly become the standard at large healthcare organizations,” the press release stated. “If you travel and require medical care – chances are that Epic is the EHR at the hospital you choose. Epic implementation improves interoperability across healthcare organizations, so patients need fewer medical records in fewer EHR systems.”

CCH is one of several other health systems which have transitioned to Epic. In September, Wyoming-based Cody Regional Health (CRH) decided to transition away from MEDITECH and move forward with an Epic EHR implementation.

The simultaneous go-live will involve all of CRH’s medical clinics around the Big Horn Basin Region, enabling data exchange of secure patient records across a single sharing platform.