In October 2022, Intellis’ New Jersey-based client RWJBarnabas received an unprecedented perfect score from Epic for its EHR implementation project, as Becker’s Hospital Review reported. The Gold Star 10 ranking, the highest level of recognition a health system can achieve from Epic, places the organization in an elite class of health systems. An essential piece of RWJBarnabas Health’s Epic success was a keen focus on data integrity and master patient index (MPI) cleanup throughout the implementation process.
Joe Galdi, vice president of revenue cycle at RWJBarnabas Health, was recently interviewed by Healthcare Innovation regarding insights gained from moving nine different EHRs systems and 650 downstream systems to the new Epic enterprise-wide EHR. Galdi has been knee-deep in the massive Epic implementation for 14 hospitals and 1,000 providers, including consolidating services and standardizing workflows.
“Everybody is looking to put the patient first in all of this, but patient information exists in hundreds of places for health systems this size,” he said. “While the goal is to get to one system and reduce redundancies, it can be a nightmare for healthcare organizations with many information systems and various patient records.”
So how did RWJBarnabas tackle the consolidation of patient information in multiple places? Galdi shared three lessons learned during the Epic implementation process that helped the organization reduce the duplicate record rate to 2%, nearly two percentage points lower than most organizations.
- Prioritize MPI cleanup to capture information for each patient into a single record. Tap on outside resources if necessary.
- Ensure data is clean before converting from legacy systems to Epic. For data that doesn’t automatically convert, build a plan for manual data abstraction to support clinicians and patient care.
- Look ahead to new partnerships or acquisitions and ensure the availability of resources to support new MPI cleanup and data abstraction projects.
According to Galdi, RWJBarnabas has ten more hospitals and around 200 providers to convert to Epic. But the possibility of new partnerships or acquisitions could increase those numbers. Intellis is ready for continued MPI cleanup, data abstraction, and more with Galdi’s team.
Keep IT Agile During M&A
With no end in sight to M&A activity, CIOs and IT leaders must get involved early to plan for the situations listed above. Keeping outside services aligned and available to support massive system consolidations is essential. Click here to learn how Intellis can support MPI cleanup and related work to ensure data integrity.