After two years in the making, Nashville-based Vanderbilt University Medical Center will shift from its McKesson electronic health record to an Epic EHR. McKesson is discontinuing support for certain clinical applications VUMC uses.

Launch day for the Epic system is set for Nov. 2, and VUMC officials have not released the estimated cost of the project.

Executives and staff have dubbed the new system “eStar”. It includes 25 separate customized modules of Epic software designed for VUMC’s specific needs.

[Also: Epic go-live at UMass Memorial a masterclass in getting staff behind an EHR switch, CIO says]

EpicLeap, the name given to the two-year project to switch to the new system, affects about 18,000 employees and also VUMC patients who use the “My Health at Vanderbilt,” patient portal. The portal will be replaced with Epic’s “My Chart.”

Executive Chief Nursing Officer Marilyn Dubree said the software switch is paying dividends already.

“The process of preparing for our eStar go live has created amazing teamwork and collaboration on the part of the Medical Center, she said in a statement posted on the VUMC website. “The interdisciplinary problem-solving around setting standards and putting into place new workflows – all of that has been really collaborative. That’s an investment that we made to be ready for go live, but it’s an investment that we will reap benefits from going forward.”

[Also: Vanderbilt preps for massive Epic EHR go-live]

“We’ve long had an innovation agenda that was catalyzed by having access to and ownership of the clinical data and an information model that connected the data to the workflow, and we’ll be preserving that level of access to data and workflow,” added Kevin Johnson, MD, eStar, senior vice president for health information technology.”

For the first several weeks, VUMC will have hundreds of eStar experts on hand to provide one-on-one support on the new technology.

For the first three weeks, the ratio of “at the elbow” support personnel to clinicians will be one-to-four, for other clinical users one-to-six, and for backend office users one-to-eight. There will be 1,386 support personnel working during the day, and another 242 working at night.

A command center, called the EpiCenter, will operate around the clock.

Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com