In addition to wishing all a very happy and productive new year, I wanted to review some of the upcoming IT changes associated with the phased opening of the South Tower during February and March. The following dates are tracking pretty well although there is always the variable of state licensure that may change some of the planed dates.
The infrastructure for the new tower is now in place to support all of our IT systems. Our first new Cerner “Net,” PathNet,” goes live with the lab on February 5th. As of that date, all orders for labs will be routed through our own laboratory. This “cutover” to the new system will, unfortunately, require some down time of CUBS, as all existing orders have to be re-entered with new orders being directed to PathNet and not St. Joseph Hospital. Stay tuned for more information on the timing of this downtime. There will be some changes to the order sentences for labs (especially micro where new questions will be asked) and possibly some need to rebuild favorites because of the changes, but no training will be required. We will be distributing “cheat sheets” to outline the changes before the go live.
The radiology go-live with RadNet and Synapse (PACS) is scheduled for February 19th. A similar downtime will be required prior to this go-live. The main changes to order sentences are already in place in our production environment. Paper-based contrast orders for radiology procedures will be replaced by contrast orders entered by pharmacy based on protocols. Administration of contrast will be documented in the MAR. In addition to radiology go-live, SurgiNet will also go-live to support anesthesia and our out-of-OR nursing documentation. The main changes for our physician staff outside of anesthesia and radiology will be in how images are viewed in PACS. We will be utilizing the same vendor program as currently utilized at St. Joseph Hospital. We’ll update you on new functionality and how to access PACS in a follow-up communication, as well as where to look for anesthesia documentation.
The OR begins its opening on March 4th (the procedure unit will already be open). The phasing in of our 7 new ORs occurs by service over a period of three weeks, with open- heart surgery moving last on the 18th and the cath labs opening on the 21st. SurgiNet will already be live and no real IT impact outside of the surgical areas will be felt at this time.
The final major IT go-live will be our ED on February 26th. FirstNet, which is integral to departmental operations, and CPOE and PowerNotes go live at this time. As with SurgiNet, the main impact is on department-specific staff including our ED docs. ED orders and documentation will now be found in Powerchart. There are many complexities of this activation as it relates to a satellite pharmacy, admissions, locating patients in the ED when consulting, etc., that you will hear more about as the date gets closer.
The next couple of months will be filled with a flurry of activities related to the South Tower opening. In addition, we have non-Tower IT go-lives such as the ambulatory EHR in primary care and e-prescribing. It’s a very busy time for us all, but an exciting one.
Best Regards,
Bill Feaster
