We often talk about the work we do at Prominence which includes a focus on emerging technologies, because we get a lot of questions in these areas. What we often overlook is the chance to highlight the steady and consistent successes from our deployment team, as they support healthcare organizations in their migration and optimization of Epic.

Today, we’re reflecting on a recent deployment project with high complexity and a broad team of strategically placed staff. The project was fun, interesting, and challenging for many reasons:

• As a high-performing academic medical center, the institution had a variety of complex workflows that needed to be understood and addressed, many of which had been localized to a specific hospital, utilizing isolated combinations of EMRs
• As a result of mergers and acquisitions, they had pockets of Epic expertise and pockets of new users
• With a “go big” mindset, we were not looking to just maintain the status quo – the goal was to truly unify as an organization to a single platform

As advisors, we join a customer’s team from the outside. This provides us with the opportunity to leverage our experience to set direction without being constrained by historical relationships or departmental pecking order. To tackle the challenges, we employed the following approach:

1. Understand the business

1. • What are the goals of the organization as a whole? Of the implementation project? Of my department?
   • What are some of the sensitive topics or areas of apprehension? What’s been done so far to tackle these? What are the expectations of this project to solve them?

2. Build connections

1. • Who are the key players – stakeholders, decision-makers, workflow experts, connection-builders?
   • What are the communication styles for each of these key players? How well do their styles match the expectations of the project? What might we need to adjust to be most effective?

3. Build trust

1. • How do I demonstrate my knowledge, experience, and commitment to success to these key players to build trust?
   • How can I maintain that trust when some things will be out of my control?

4. Quantify risks

1. • How do overall risks of timeline, budget, and scope manifest in this project? Who’s accountable for each of those areas?
   • What are the key risks unique to this project? How should I communicate status and escalate concerns for unique or one-off risks?

5. Articulate expectations

1. • How much do users understand of what is changing and what will remain the same with this project? How are the changes being communicated before go-live and reinforced after go live? How much authority will I have to set and uphold expectations?

6. Build on lessons learned

1. • Have any departments experienced a major transition recently? Can we learn anything from their planning, preparation, or cutover processes that can inform the rest of the project?

7. Reinforce consistency

1. • How confident are we in the adherence to processes across the build and testing teams? How much authority will I have to increase consistency during development? How essential is consistency across departments and hospitals from an end-user perspective? How are we planning to quantify and reinforce that?

8. Measure outcomes

1. • What are the most critical metrics to track and measure at go-live for my area? How are we establishing baselines and thresholds for these measures? How much can we connect with end users before go live to build their understanding of the definition of success?

At Prominence, we relish the opportunity to solve the most challenging problems in healthcare, because it improves the entire system. We hire the most creative and versatile staff in the industry so you can have the confidence in their ability to assess and address your needs. Want to learn more about becoming part of the Prominence family? We’d love to talk.