UH Epic: Shifting Focus to Clinical Content

UH Clinical Update | May 2022

Now that the UH Epic program team is nearing the end of the Build phase of the electronic health record (EHR) implementation, the focus shifts to clinical content efforts. This encompasses the process of planning, selecting, designing and building clinical content into our new EHR to support patient care. There are numerous aspects to this process including Clinical System Design, Order Set Validation, Medication Build/Validation and more. 

Clinical System Design – Clinical System Design (CSD) involves the gathering of legacy content, facilitating content review and customizing new content into UH Epic. So far, the CSD work has been ambulatory-focused in preparation for the Wave 1 go-live with our Primary Care facilities on March 4, 2023. CSD includes content such as: note templates; screenings and questionnaires; SmartSets (see paragraph below); procedure documentation; and preference lists for ordering, notes and diagnoses.

Order Set Validation – UH physician specialty reviewers and pharmacists will review, build and validate Order Sets in Epic. Epic uses SmartSets to collect related orders and diagnoses that are appropriate for a specific patient situation, and an Order Set is a type of SmartSet that only includes orders. Grouping orders into SmartSets, Order Sets, or panels simplifies the ordering process because clinicians don't need to search for each order they want to place. UH Provider Order Set Leads have been identified for 50 subspecialty groups, and will begin this work by focusing on inpatient order sets.  

Protocol Validation – A committee of physicians, pharmacists and nurses will meet to review and approve protocols to verify that protocol build is clinically accurate, standardized and functional. The Cancer Care Operational Workgroup and the Beacon (Epic’s oncology application) team have already been focusing on oncology protocols.

ClinDoc Content – ClinDoc (or Clinical Documentation) is Epic’s application for inpatient documentation performed by clinicians and can include notes, flowsheets, assessments, plan of care and medication administration. The UH team has been focused on nursing and ancillary documentation.

Medication Build/Validation – UH pharmacists are reviewing a specified scope of medications to review the accuracy and clinical appropriateness of each medication.

Lab (Beaker) Clinical Content Validation – This is the process by which lab operational staff ensure all clinical data, including reference ranges and test compendium, are built to match the lab’s safety standards.

Preference Card Build – Surgical preference cards are built in Epic. Accurate preference cards ensure efficient preparation for documentation during surgical cases.

Clinical Content Timeline:

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