Background: Ellis Medicine
Ellis Medicine is a 438-bed community and teaching healthcare system serving New York’s Capital Region. With five campuses – Ellis Hospital, Ellis Health Center, Bellevue Woman’s Center and Medical Center of Clifton Park – five additional service locations, more than 3,300 employees and more than 700 members of our medical staff, Ellis Medicine is proud to provide a lifetime of care for patients. Ellis offers an extensive array of inpatient and outpatient services – including cardiac, cancer, emergency, neuroscience, and women’s services.
Implementing Cerner Millennium at Ellis Medicine with Optimum Healthcare IT.
Challenges
Ellis Medicine decided in 2017 to replace its Siemens Sorian system with the Cerner Millennium system. With the goal of providing high-quality care at a lower cost, Ellis was seeking a partner that could provide project management, advisory services, training, and implementation of the Cerner Millennium system to support patients across the care continuum. The new Millennium system replaced several best-of-breed solutions, including Allscripts, Meditech, and Siemens. The implementation included more than 60 applications and solutions, including two of the latest, Clairvia and Capacity Management. This project was unique in that Ellis Medicine was the beta site for Cerner’s new Agile Methodology and Model solution and would be the first organization to implement and go-live utilizing this process.
Optimum Healthcare IT understands how EHRs work and how to implement them best so hospitals can serve their communities better. We appreciated the expertise and knowledge they brought to Ellis Medicine and for ensuring that the implementation of the system set our staff up for success.
| Chief Information Officer
Solution
Optimum provided the project management and advisory services during the planning, implementation, and training of the Cerner Millennium EHR system. With a combination of Cerner knowledge and a long history of change management experience, Optimum’s team of experts partnered with Ellis staff, serving in key leadership positions. Replacing an EHR is a transformative project that touches all areas of a health system, requiring strong leadership and precise execution. The Optimum Team worked with Ellis to determine the best strategy to fit the needs of the organization, managing the detailed project scope, implementation, associated changes, and helping Ellis better serve their community. Utilizing the new Agile Cerner methodology, the project was a success as the project team met the planned timeline, was under budget, and delivered a fully implemented system with 1,300+ trained end-users.
