Workqueue Optimization at PeaceHealth with Optimum ApplicationCare
Background: PeaceHealth
PeaceHealth, based in Vancouver, Washington, is a not-for-profit Catholic health system offering care to communities in Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. PeaceHealth has approximately 16,000 caregivers, a multi-specialty medical group practice with more than 1,200 physicians and providers, and ten medical centers serving urban and rural communities throughout the Northwest. In 1890, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace founded what has become PeaceHealth. Today, PeaceHealth is the legacy of its founding Sisters and remains dedicated to ensuring that every person receives safe, compassionate care.
In partnership with PeaceHealth, Optimum Healthcare IT streamlines error maintenance while improving workflow and efficiency.
Challenge
Workqueues in the Epic Electronic Health Record (EHR) system provide powerful functionality to keep business operations running smoothly. PeaceHealth had a backlog of errors within various EpicCare Ambulatory error queues, spanning interface error logs, MyChart errors, In Basket errors, and others. The PeaceHealth Ambulatory team did not have the capacity for this catch-up work.
As part of Optimum’s Managed Services offering, we provide expertise in root-cause maintenance issues, to help reduce the overall maintenance needed in a client’s Epic system over time. It was important to PeaceHealth that they understand how to streamline error maintenance and avoid future backlog so they could dedicate their resources to higher-value tasks. Improved workflow efficiency, the reduced lag time between manual corrections, and faster issue identification are all possible – if workqueues are configured and managed correctly.
As the leader of Optimum’s Managed Services team, I am quite proud of the work the team accomplishes every day. We alleviate stress related to clinical systems support in health systems, and I know this positively impacts the care that these systems provide to their patients. The Managed Services team focuses on delivering quality support, such as the Workqueue error reduction at PeaceHealth, by reducing the impact from technology problems and understanding the root cause. I believe this focus benefits our partners in terms of improved quality and efficiency.
Kristi Lanciotti | Vice President, Managed Services | Optimum Healthcare IT
Solution
PeaceHealth engaged Optimum Healthcare IT to provide cost-effective, ongoing staff resources through our ApplicationCare team to work down their backlog of Epic interface and workqueue errors. Optimum worked to identify the root cause of multiple errors, from those prohibiting patient care, to those that just create “noise” and confusion. The focus was within five Ambulatory workqueues spanning multiple clinical workflows.
The project included several analyst teams, including Interface, Beaker, Willow, ClinDoc, Clinical Informatics, Orders, and Provider SER. Optimum tracked the count of errors resolved by type throughout the engagement and documented the resolution workflows. Optimum advised and implemented potential build, process enhancements, or changes that would reduce the number of errors and optimize workqueue management going forward throughout the engagement. The result was a significant reduction in the overall incoming errors and a reduction of “noise” to allow better for better error prioritization. Ultimately, this translates to a reduction in analyst work effort and better patient care.
Project Details
Workqueues
Analyst Teams
Outside Vendors
Error Types
