In late 2017, we announced that Columbia, Weill
Cornell Medicine, and NewYork-Presbyterian signed a
joint contract with Epic to create a single
electronic health record across our three
institutions. We want to provide a brief update on
what has been accomplished so far and what we have
yet to do before we “go live” in January 2020.
Over the past 12 months, more than 2,500 people from
across our three organizations – including more than 200
staff who have been hired specifically for the Epic
project – have been working together to make hundreds of
key decisions that will guide the planning and
development of the system. In addition, hundreds of
physicians across 52 different Clinical Leadership
Groups have been working to align our practices and
processes across the three organizations, so that we
could develop standardized clinical workflows in the new
system.
The teamwork and professionalism we have seen throughout this phase of the
project has been remarkable. Faculty and staff representing every clinical area,
and nearly every administrative function, have devoted thousands of hours of
effort in addition to their already busy work demands.
All of this effort has led to the current phase of the project, the build phase.
The EpicTogether team is currently building our Epic system to our
specifications, integrating all of the decisions you’ve made about how we want
the system to work for our clinicians.
In 2019, our focus will shift dramatically as we move
from building the system to training everyone who will
be using it. This is a massive undertaking, and you will
be hearing a great deal about it in the months ahead. We
will also be installing and conducting extensive testing
of the computers and other infrastructure that will be
used to deploy Epic across the three organizations.
We are on track to launch one of the most advanced and up-to-date electronic
health record systems in the world. We want to express our deepest gratitude for
everything you’ve done and continue to do to make this project successful.
For information and frequent updates on the project,
please visit the website,
http://epictogetherny.org.
