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.
ITSM is straight forward creation of Incidents and Requests. It can get more confusing as you layer more modules on top of it with event management, risk, project, etc. It also becomes more costly as everything is a different license. Integration between other external applications is very easy to do with their API. You can easily create endpoints for external apps to talk to or create REST messages for the platform to reach out directly.
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 ServiceNow performance speed has big room for improvement, as it is quite slow in loading Dashboards with more than 5-6 widgets. We are keeping our ServiceNow version up to date with latest releases.
Usually there are issues with having multiple ServiceNow tabs open in the browser and have different dashboards open in those tabs.
The way of showing a history log of all activities on Incident ticket is not optimal and easy to use or search in and have very old design.
While we are very likely to renew, we are also assessing if we should renew all of what we currently subscribe to as we try to reduce costs. Some parts of the business feel there may be a better tool out there to fit their process requirements. We are currently working with them to identify what those requirements are to see if it makes sense while also pointing out a reduced cost of tooling is not always the best fit if we have an increased cost of customization and maintenance between tools.
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.
It provides a lot of modification options which is wonderful for certain team usage but becomes too much of a job when it comes to the Service Desk. Also on the app support side, since too much information can be carried, it affects the GUI and makes it complex.
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.
I was not in the team that take care of the installation of ServiceNow but their feedback was very positive. Go live was done by the planned date and their support at the beginning provided always a timely response. Their customer service is friendly and easy to reach. Today we don't use their customer service anymore because we have an internal IT dedicated to maintaining the system.
We went through a re-implementation last year with a partner and were very pleased with the outcome. We looked at several partners and chose one that was able to provide an entire scope and cost upfront of what would be required to complete our requirements. We worked very closely with the dedicated team assigned to our project throughout the process and they fully delivered on all of our requirements that we presented in the initial scope.
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.
I've used Freshservice which is very similar to ServiceNow. I can definitely say ServiceNow performs better in a larger environment. Freshservice is usually used in smaller organization or less complx environment. Plus the ServiceNow reporting and dashboard features are more accurate than Freshservice. ServiceNow is a bit costly but gives way more features that really helps my organization.
1. It is not great when they can't seperate apps/products from a particular sku, forcing you to make a business case for a larger portion of functionlity than your current business case seeks to address. 2. ServiceNow reps are able to work with you when economies of scale are projected out. They are willing to start at a desired tier and provide pricing at applicable upgraded tiers
Very easy to use. Capture more data from the Incident and problem management. Easier to escalate and following the change management process to resole the issues.
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!
Fast implementation of our Sales & Operation/Projects controls and process - tool adapted to our needs, not us to adapt to the tool.
Once we are a consulting/implementation company, our customers are happy to see that we use what we sell, and it is easy to show them how this platform/tool can have an impact on our own business.
