Epic is very good on the medical side and continues improving mental health and dental care. Having integrated telehealth via Zoom was a game-changer. During COVID, it was vital to have telehealth options and to ensure it was completely HIPAA Compliant and easy to document inside their health record.
Truly love and appreciate the templets that we can use to send out office specific emails - Also the openings on a schedule notifications are great to get the schedule full - we use it daily!
There are doctors' notes templates with prepopulated fields in them. This saves a lot of time.
Epic sends medication orders to pharmacies electronically so that we do not have to call. This saves a lot of time.
Epic has a Secure Chat feature via which we can send HIPAA protected messages to any employee with the patient's name and record attached.
It has a PDMP link. We can look up what controlled medications such as opiates patients have been prescribed and by whom.
It links to MyChart, which is a platform via which patients can look up their own information without them having to call the doctors. This saves a lot of time.
Visual Updates: While Epic is constantly improving the user experience, there are a few features that still need a design refresh. While this does not effect functionality, it does have an impact on user perception.
Ordering: While placing an order for a physician is very easy, a few changes to the workflow could improve the experience for physicians.
The overall cost for the basic is great, it is all the extras that make it more expensive - we have a few locations so it is not horrible and we use what we pay for to the fullest.
The only real down fall is the time lapse - it pulls every 30 minutes from the server, I wish it was more real time as sometimes we have an opening that has already been filled and someone still gets a notification of an opening
We can only text so many words to a patient in response or trying to send a notice - which isn't that big of a downfall.
You should invest time into taking a training class before using Epic, but once you get the hang of it the usability features are endless! My favorite part about Epic is how it is automated and "trained" to catch user errors that would typically be missed in normal documentation/charting. This ensures accuracy and eliminates errors.
The initial training was good but would have been even better had I been more familiar with the system before taking it. I found learning how to deal with Epic while working in the field at the same time was a (pardon the pun) Epic learning curve. I really think there should be a scribe who does the data entry and others can focus on what they do best.
Epic gives extensive customization options in terms of utility and view. I have found this to be highly useful and efficient EHR as compared to other EHRs we use in our organization.
Lighthouse does not offer as many features as NexHealth which is why we are making the switch to NexHealth currently. Solutionreach was not as good as Lighthouse.
Being able to track and document all of our services in the same place has made an exceptional improvement in continuity of patient care, both internally across departments (medical/dental/mental health) and externally with specialists and other healthcare organizations on a national scale.
Continuous improvements in Data reporting and analytics make tracking and implementing quality improvement measures throughout the year easy.
Massive improvements to the ELLA training platform, combined with detailed and interactive training materials for all system areas, make onboarding and staff training much easier!
