Published: November 13, 2008 11:43 pm      

KDMC to introduce new clinical information system this weekend

Ashland — On Saturday, King’s Daughters Medical Center will “go live,” implementing a new state-of-the-art clinical information system called Epic.

Epic will help KDMC improve clinical quality and patient care through streamlining communication and standardizing documentation.

“The Epic system will integrate information whether the patient visits a KDMC Family Care Center or has a diagnostic test at the Imaging Center, and then link it to inpatient services if needed,” said Cathy Cooper-Weidner, vice president of Information Services/chief information officer.

“It allows our physicians and caregivers to have a complete clinical profile, in a very secure, state-of-the-art system.”

Today when a patient is admitted to the medical center the same questions are asked at each visit about family history and previous surgeries.

With Epic, this information will now become part of a permanent electronic medical record; therefore, making it necessary to only have to add what is new or changed since the last visit or last admission.

“We are very excited to get started with the new system, yet we are realistic to know our team will have a learning curve with the initial launch of the new software,” said Mona Thompson, vice president of Patient Services/chief nursing officer.

Patients may want to allow a little extra time for registration and other data entry processes during the first few days, she said.

“This is an exciting time in KDMC’s history. For the past two years, we have been preparing to implement this new system,” said KDMC President/CEO Fred Jackson.

“We have chosen the best possible clinical information system and we are ready for the launch.”

Epic is the single largest information system investment in the medical center’s history — nearly $50 million.

To provide a smooth transition, KDMC has put together a support system of approximately 100 “experts” taking questions from team members and physicians, as well as 300 “super users” throughout the medical center and seven help stations.

KDMC team members and physicians have been through more than 55,000 hours of training for the new Epic system.