Priming the Pump

At The Children's Clinic, providers were given a one page form that could be used to abstract chart information. The form included information such as medication, problem lists, medical history etc. The providers were also given admin time to encourage them to abstract charts. Charts were pulled for the week of Go-Live and given to providers for abstraction. Our Chief Medical Officer worked with the Associate Medical Director to oversee the clinical abstraction process. Consensus on what to abstract was determined by our consultant who pre-prepared abstraction forms that were given to providers as a template for abstraction. One of the benfits of abstraction was that we were able to increase our number of visits during the first two months following Go-Live. With 18,351 patients annually, TCC was unable to abstract ALL charts, only those for the first month of Go-Live. It would have been helpful to have been able to continue the abstraction process.

Some of the challenges faced at TCC during the transition was the utilization of staff time, the need to work both in the paper chart and EPIC required many staff to do double duties temporarily. For example, medical records had to continue to pull charts while implementing their new role as scanners of documents into the EMR system. While TCC was prepared for providers to have to work off of EPIC and the chart, we were however, unprepared for the rest of the staff, especially medical records, to have such significantly increased workloads. Another challenge was that providers were holding on to charts for abstraction, which limited access to the chart/paperwork for the frontline and back office staff.

With all these challenges however, TCC was able to see pre-visit numbers within two months of G0-Live.