IET Report : UC Davis Health System Technology Highlights
Clinical Technology
Home care providers receive training on mobile equipment
Last fall, the Clinical Information System (CIS) implementation team and the training and documentation team conducted training for Home Services and Hospice nurses. The Epic System’s Home Health tools require the use of laptop computers with wireless air cards and mobile printers during in-home patient visits. Traveling UC Davis Health System (UCDHS) care providers are bringing the new equipment into patient homes to make placing orders and clinical documentation into the Epic Electronic Medical Record (EMR) easier. Benefits include the availability of electronic records for future care, and reporting requirements. Contact: John Cook, john.cook@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Emergency Department goes live with new workflows
The Emergency Department went live with Physician Order Entry and Nursing Documentation on November 5th, 2008. The deployment went well, with 33,991 total EMR orders placed by clinicians within nine days for 1,446 patients. Overall user adoption and satisfaction was good as was the integration of new workflows for clinical documentation, lab, imaging and medication ordering, and patient admitting and discharge processes. The pilot of printing discharge prescriptions on tamper proof paper was also successfully implemented and met with approval by the physicians. Because of the successful transition, floor support and Command Center staff early, resulting in a cost savings. 226 issue tickets were logged; all normal priority or enhancement requests, and over 185 have been resolved. The remaining are outstanding enhancement requests or order set changes. Contact: John Cook, john.cook@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
MyChart pilot will test medical record access
A pilot program for MyChart that will allow UCDHS patients to access elements of their medical record via a new secure Web site and communicate with their UCDHS clinician is planned for February. The Health Information Management (HIM) leadership and many clinicians are involved with defining which elements of the medical records patients will be able to access. The current design includes a problem list, medical history, and medication list. The Epic MyChart application will eventually replace the functionality provided by the current application, Relay Health. Contact: John Cook, john.cook@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Transition of clinics to ePrescribing begins in January
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) mandate to replace the faxing of prescription medications with electronic transmission has been delayed from January 1, 2009 until January 1, 2012. Although the deadline has been extended, UCDHS will proceed with the implementation of an interface to ePrescribing vendor, SureScripts (an Epic partner) in anticipation of industry-wide adoption of ePrescribing. The implementation of SureScripts will position UCDHS to take advantage of Medicare reimbursement available to physicians who use the online prescription service. When an outpatient prescription is ordered, the EMR will transmit the prescription via SureScripts assuming the patient’s preferred pharmacy is able to accept prescriptions electronically. Otherwise the prescription will be faxed as it is now via RelayHealth. By leaving the existing fax-based system in place, patients can continue to use a preferred pharmacy that has yet to transition to ePrescribing. The SureScripts ePrescribing interface went live in three pilot clinics (Internal Medicine, J Street and Carmichael) on January 7, 2009. All remaining clinics will transition on January 20. Contact: John Cook, john.cook@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Epic Electronic Medical Record updates
In an effort to continue to enhance and add functionality to the Epic Electronic Medical Record (EMR), the following updates have been made:
- Physician Connect—Work continues on the design and testing of Epic Physician Connect application functionality. The application gives referring physicians the ability to access patient information within UCDHS’ Epic EMR.
- Focused Epic Customer Support—IT staff, trained and dedicated to support the Epic applications, are located in the IT Customer Support Center from 8am to 5pm every The IT EMR support is part of a greater effort and process to improve IT customer service.
- Epic software upgrade—The 2008 software upgrade project has moved to the third quarter of 2009.
Contact: John Cook, john.cook@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Technology to access clinical images ready to deploy
A new process and technology that enables clinicians to access images on CD-ROMs brought in by patients and created by outside health providers will soon be loaded on all UCDHS clinical workstations (approximately 5,00). IT and Radiology worked together to assess technology solutions and after product reviews and testing, a site license to the software application PacsSCAN was acquired. When a clinician or support staff loads a CD-ROM with clinical images, the PacsSCAN software will automatically load and provide an easy-to-use menu to select one or all images on the disk. The selected images will be loaded onto a new segregated Philips iSite PACS server. There it will be available for a clinician to review using the same Phillips PACS software used to review internally created PACS images. From a new Web-based request page, clinicians will have the option to request that any outside clinical image be stored permanently through a new Web-based request page, and when asked, Radiology will add the appropriate patient identification and image accession numbers and store the image in the Philips PACS permanent storage. As long term storage of the image will incur an annual cost, only images required for ongoing comparison or to support care decisions should be requested. PacsSCAN is scheduled to deploy early this year. Contact: Amy Mentjox, amy.mentjox@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu or Scott Foster, scott.foster@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Philips PACS software
IT and Radiology staff have partnered for many months to renegotiate the Philips (Stentor) PACS software contract (due to expire) and improve service levels. Technical assessments are in process to assess the PACS server and storage infrastructure, and the network elements that support the movement of clinical images. Most of the servers, storage, and network elements are now over seven years old. Significant additions and replacements of imaging modalities are in the process of installation in the Medical Center and clinic locations. The required connections with PACS are planned and current network connections are being assessed. The PACS functionality will need expansion due to the growth in both the number and size of clinic image testing. Contact: Mike Minear, michael.minear@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu, Scott Foster, scott.foster@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu or Marge Gorthy, marge.gorthy@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Educational Technology
Office of Medical Education redesigns processes and software
IT and School of Medicine (SOM) staff have partnered to assess and fully redesign the processes used to support faculty, students, and staff in the School of Medicine. These processes primarily focus on supporting medical students (i.e., admissions, grading, financial aid, transcripts, and curriculum infrastructure) and how SOM staff, faculty, and students enter and access data. As the processes and tasks have been assessed and redesigned, IT is creating software to support the ‘new’ and optimal designs.
As of November 30, 2008, the School of Medicine received 4635 applications for the 2009 academic year starting in July. Overall, applicants have logged into the portal to check and update their status 33,961 times. Up to this point in time, the admissions office has had to generate zero paper documents in support of the admissions process. This has saved tremendous amounts of staff time and increased cost savings from paper copying. Contact: Dan Cotton, daniel.cotton@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu or Roy Rai gurmeet.rai@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Research Technology
Computing cluster for the Neuro-Theraputics Research Institute (NTRI)
The Neuro-Theraputics Research Institute (NTRI) grant provided funding for high capacity computing hardware. IT and the School of Medicine added additional funds and launched a collaborative effort with NTRI to develop and deploy a high performance cluster in support of the NTRI grant project’s computational needs. Hardware for this system was identified and purchased in mid-2008. System administrators installed and configured the cluster hardware and software and are now working with MIND Institute researchers to deploy and run their compute-intensive jobs. Principal Investigator Dr. Tony Simon has high hopes for being able to use the power of the cluster to greatly increase his ability to produce extremely high resolution brain maps as part of his research. High level computation began in November. Design and plans for this computing cluster include the ability to link with other hardware clusters and add capacity as requirements, new projects, and grant funding dictate. This project will be the foundation of future UCDHS research computing clusters. and hopefully will negate or reduce the need for investigators or labs to set up their own “silo” cluster computing systems in the future. Contact: Dan Cotton, daniel.cotton@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Clinical trial software gets upgrade
For the past two years the UC Davis Heath System has used a software application called Velos (velos.com) to assist in managing clinical trials. This application is also used by Duke, the Cleveland Clinic, Columbia University as well as many other academic medical centers. The Cancer Center led the selection and implementation of Velos for UCDHS. Velos provides an integrated suite of clinical, administrative, and financial products, and Velos eResearch, the company’s flagship product line, is a comprehensive clinical research management information system. The Health System tested version 8 and implemented the software in December. Along with many new features in eResearch version 8, UCDHS will also be deploying another module in the Velos suite—eSample. There are a number of new grants and investigators requesting to use Velos, and license and support expansion is being supported. Contact: Paul Pannu, paul.pannu@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
i2b2 research chart
Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2)( i2b2.org/) is an NIH-funded National Center for Biomedical Computing (NCBC) based at Partners HealthCare System in Boston, Massachusetts. Established in 2004 in response to an NIH Roadmap Initiative RFA, this NCBC is one of four national centers awarded in this first competition. One of 12 specific initiatives in the New Pathways to Discovery Cluster, the NCBCs will initiate the development of a national computational infrastructure for biomedical computing. The NCBCs and related R01s constitute the National Program of Excellence in Biomedical Computing. The software that resulted from these grants has been put into open source. UCDHS joined the Boston-based group.
In June 2008 the UC Davis Health System deployed a “proof of concept” instance of i2b2 and invited several prominent researchers within the Health System to a demonstration. Since the demonstration, the CTSC (ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/ctsc/ ) has obtained 2 IRB approvals to move forward with a production instance of the i2b2 database within the Health System. The purpose of the Research Data Warehouse is to provide a central data repository for research-related data within the UCDHS. Currently, comprehensive data concerning care provided in the health system is contained in numerous, disparate data systems and each research-related request for data must be fielded in an ad hoc manner. Additionally, in order to populate a de-identified database that will operate with an open source query tool, data must be transformed and stored in a central database, mandating the extraction of data from disparate systems, storing this data centrally, validating the accuracy of the data and stripping all PHI. Contact: Kent Anderson, kent.anderson@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Health Informatics Graduate Program
Health Informatics program promotes growth efforts at national conference
The UCDHS Health Informatics Program occupied a booth at the national American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) conference held annually each November in Washington, DC. The booth had lots of visitors and interest from prospective graduate students. The AMIA conference was also functioned as a launch for a number of new collaterals that the Informatics program used to recruit new graduate students. An online graduate certificate is in process of development and has been approved by the Academic Senate, and thus far there appears to be great interest in this option. Contact: Peter Yellowlees, peter.yellowlees@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Privacy and Security
New State and Federal privacy regulations slated for near future
Government regulators are increasing the level of regulation and oversight for the storage and use of protected health information (PHI) and personal identity information (PI). UCDHS will be impacted significantly by the four new regulations—enforced by the State of California and Federal law—A summary of each new regulation is listed below.
- California Assembly Bill 211
The California Assembly Bill 211 went into effect on January 1 and focuses on unauthorized access—defined as the inappropriate review or viewing of patient medical information without a direct need for diagnosis, treatment, or other lawful use as permitted. The bill establishes a new state Office of Health Information Integrity that will be responsible for enforcing statutes governing the confidentiality of health care data and imposing administrative fines. Finally, it creates new penalties and fines for organizations in the event that negligent disclosure occurs. It also fines significantly any individual who inappropriately uses or discloses information for financial gain. - California Senate Bill 541
This bill prevents unlawful or unauthorized access, use, or disclosure of, patients’ medical information. It covers general acute care, acute psychiatric, and specialty hospitals. It also creates additional and significant new fines, a three year window for penalties, increases audit powers for the State, and provides agencies with full discretion. A history of compliance with this and other state and federal statutes, the extent to which a facility detected violation and took preventative action to immediately correct, may be considered. Significant new reporting requirements will be put into effect (i.e., organizations must report unlawful or unauthorized access, use, or disclosure to the department and affected individual within five days.) - Red Flag
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) created the Red Flag rules some years ago, but until recently, they only applied them to ‘creditors’ such as banks. In the past few months the scope was changed to include hospitals and faculty practice plans as ‘creditors’. The regulations mandate the creation of an “Identity Theft Prevention Program,” which must include “reasonable” policies and procedures (given the breadth and nature of the medical center’s or practice plan’s activities) to essentially identify patterns, practices, and specific activities indicating the possible existence of identity theft (called ‘Red Flags’) and create monitoring capabilities. The program must also put new policies and capabilities into place to prevent and mitigate identity theft. These changes will be significant for UCDHS and mitigation projects are already in process. - Higher Education Act
The Federal Bill-H.R. 4137 College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2008 was signed into law on August 14, 2008. This law has new provisions that require universities to provide students with access to commercial music downloading services and implement traffic filtering technologies in order to deter peer-to-peer file sharing. This law was heavily lobbied by the motion picture and music industries. It will force UCDHS to utilize internet filtering tools to prevent illegal file sharing technologies.
Identity and access management—a collaborative effort
This is the first significant joint project between the IT divisions at UCDHS and the UC Davis campus. The shared approach is required as many students, faculty, and software systems are in common between the Davis and Sacramento campuses. The collaborative effort will bring talented staff from both campuses together to create a better outcome and reduce installation and ongoing costs.
This project is similar to efforts in-process on six UC campuses; but the UC Davis effort is unique with the partnership of the campus and health system. The project goal is to create a joint technology infrastructure to define the identity of all computer users in a central database, define roles and security access rules for all users, and provide common authentication and log-in tools that will manage log-in and access to all computer applications and functions. As the project proceeds, the UC Davis community will eventually see a dramatic reduction in the number of computer passwords they must use and remember. With the current decentralized technology log-in technologies (delivered within each software application), it is common for UCDHS physicians to have to use 15 or more different passwords, and the average UCDHS staff person over 7 passwords.
The final selection of the technology tools are in process, and the scope of the project phases are currently being defined. This project is uniquely large in scope and complexity, as there are almost 500 different computer applications used on both UC Davis campuses, and when all types of computer users are taken into account (faculty, staff, prospective students, students, alumni, contractors, and visitors) there are almost one and a half million ‘person identities’ that must be defined and managed. The project will include improvements in computer access security and logging—as required by a growing number of regulations and computer threats that UC Davis technology, privacy, and compliance staff must manage. Contact: Gary Jellis, gary.jellis@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu or Monica Moldovan, monica.moldovan@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Identity Finder
Identity Finder, a new software purchased in partnership with the UC Davis IET department, provides the capability to search microcomputers, servers, databases, and storage devices for files and records that contain PHI and PI. As personal identity information is found, it will be assessed for appropriate and safe record keeping. This process supports audits and other assessments to comply with HIPPA and the new privacy oriented Federal and State regulations. The tool will be used throughout UC Davis and UCDHS. Contact: Mike Minear, michael.minear@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu or Teresa Porter, teresa.porter@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Email filtering used for protected health information
An RFP will soon be opened to review email filtering software tools that can audit, filter and block outgoing emails with PHI and PI information. In addition, the tool will provide functionality for sending encrypted emails when confidential data needs to be sent but must be secured to comply with Federal or State law. Under the direction of the UCDHS Executive Compliance Committee, an updated policy is being created around email usage and auditing as dictated by regulation. Email filtering tools are also used by other UC Health Systems. Contact: Mike Minear, michael.minear@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu or Teresa Porter, teresa.porter@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Management Reporting and Data Analysis
New data access/reporting portal
Microsoft’s SharePoint portal tool was recently added to support enhanced and secure data delivery. This is a low cost tool and will be a short term option used to consolidate data reports and other shared content into a secure portal. More robust portals that deliver many types of data within UCDHS are currently being reviewed. This tool will become the new standard for posting and sharing information; management data, clinical outcomes analysis, disease registry information, some research data, and other operational information. Contact: Dan Cotton, daniel.cotton@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Technology Support and Reliability
Outpatient medical center in works for Placer County
UC Davis Health System and Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) have teamed up to build an outpatient medical facility that will bring more physicians, medical technology, and primary and specialty care services to the Lincoln, Rocklin and Roseville areas of Placer County. Information Technology staff worked closely with clinical teams moving to the new building and facility staff to design, acquire, and deploy required technologies. The new center is one of the most technologically advanced clinics UCDHS has ever had with many clinical services using technology as part of patient care, including: diagnostic imaging services (computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Ultrasound, general X-ray and Mammography), outpatient pharmacy, and the clinical laboratory. The new health center is located near Highway 65 in Rocklin’s Orchard Creek business park. Contact: Craig Solenberger, craig.solenberger@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
New Pavilion to be technologically advanced
The new Emergency and Surgery Services Pavilion is by far the most technologically complex building that UC Davis Health System has ever built or occupied. There have been significant efforts in technology design relating to operating rooms, wireless medical devices, medical device network design, and video requirements in the Pavilion that require a robust, secure, and high speed network. The planned network will support medical devices, mission critical clinical applications, clinical imaging, video, and VoIP telephone technology. Several open items are being worked on to finalize the technology design; the vast majority of the plan is completed and ready. Contact: Amy Mentjox, amy.mentjox@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Telemedicine Resource Center and Rural Prime facility update
The Telemedicine Resource Center (TRC), a newly constructed building (approximately 51,000 square feet) located on the eastside of the Medical Education building, is targeted to open around June of 2010. The main occupants will be the Telemedicine Learning Center (TLC), Center for Health and Technology, Center for Virtual Care, and Distance Education. These departments will utilize a significant amount of high-tech video technology directly and indirectly through the IT infrastructure between the OR’s in the Surgery and Emergency Services Pavilion (SESP), and the Medical Education Building. The IT network infrastructure includes higher speeds and redundant failover paths back to the campus core network, where high speed network routing of clinical images, voice, video, and data connects to the UC Davis Health System and the Internet. Contact: Amy Mentjox, amy.mentjox@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Vocera software gives clinicians hands-free communications
Currently the UC Davis Health System supports over 4,400 Vocera badges which give clinicians instant hands-free communications. The Vocera software was upgraded to the current version, 4.1 in December 2008. Version 4.1 includes new features and improved functionality including automatic application-level fail over to the upgraded backup servers which will automatically restore full service within minutes in the event of primary server failure. The auto failover capability will be a significant improvement over the current manual failover process that can take 30-90 minutes (if IT staffs are on site). The new version also allows off-campus telephone and non-badge telephones the ability to call any Vocera badge. Contact: Craig Solenberger, craig.solenberger@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Replacement of Wide Area Network (WAN) scheduled for clinic locations
For many years, single or dual T1 circuits were used to provide network access to PCN clinic locations. Once Epic was deployed to the clinics, Epic usage, and access to the Philips PACS application to view clinical images dramatically changed the network requirements for remote clinic sites. As a result, the networks need to be faster, have redundant paths to ensure uptime in the event of network failure, have the ability to adjust network speeds as required to meet computer use requirements, be monitored to ensure uptime, and support quick problem resolution. These goals are being achieved with the deployment of new network circuits from AT&T that provide high speed adjustable, monitorable, and redundant fiber connections. AT&T needs to install new fiber cable to support the service, and the replacement is planned to take a total of twelve months. Nine clinic locations have already been converted to the new circuits, and the remaining locations will be converted to the new circuits by April. Contact: Gary Jellis, gary.jellis@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Vendor bids to be reviewed for aging servers
The current UNIX servers and storage devices which support Epic and other applications are aging and will soon not have proper vendor support. Vendor bids are now being reviewed, and the new equipment should be installed, tested, and conversions made for application software and data by spring. Contact: Tony Pinillos, genaro.pinillos@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Microsoft SQL databases to be upgraded
In January 2008, Microsoft announced that it would no longer provide standard support for the older versions of the Microsoft SQL database product (SQL Server 2000 or earlier). A number of current and planned software applications require the new version. As a result, UC Davis Health System is in the process of upgrading existing SQL Server 2000 clusters to SQL Server 2005. The new hardware will run Windows operating system 2003, a 64-bit operating system that should boost performance. SQL Server 2005 has several new features that offer better security. This should lessen vulnerability to hackers which is vital due to the sensitivity and criticality of the data. The migration is expected to be completed by the end of January. Contact: Tony Pinillos, genaro.pinillos@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Technology Management
New technology monitoring product suite implementation and training to begin
All hardware and software elements of the new technology monitoring product suite have been chosen via an RFP process—HP OpenView won the bid. The software and hardware has been received and has been installed in the UCDHS data center. The following components were purchased:
- Universal Configuration Management Database (CMDB)—a technology asset application with auto discovery. It is also a key element of problem resolution and tracking.
- Asset Center—this component is used to create an inventory and asset management system that ties directly into the configuration database.
- Service Center—this element will help staff manage outage events and service requests.
- Operations Center, HP Network Node Manager, and HP Business Availability Center—these components are used to connect to, and manage UCDHS technology infrastructure.
- Citrix Edgesight—will also be purchased to probe and monitor the “thin client” applications in the Citrix Farm—a key aspect of Epic.
The current tool—Altiris Client Management Suite of software—will continue to be used to probe and monitor Microsoft client systems and will integrate with the HP products. To reduce the cost of implementation, UC Davis Health System will minimize the use of HP consulting, but the project will emphasize training UCDHS staff in the use of these important tools. Contact: Gary Jellis, gary.jellis@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Customer Service
New Customer Service Manager joins IT team
Bob O’Connor joined the UC Davis Information Technology division as Manager of Customer Service on December 1, 2008. Bob comes to UC Davis from Cisco where he has worked for eight years. Bob’s most recent position was as a Senior IT Manager in Cisco’s strategic Information Systems group. During his tenure at Cisco, Bob managed many aspects of technology service delivery and has focused on implementation of the ITIL best practices. He has managed Cisco staff located in America and other countries; delivering technology support to Cisco’s worldwide operations. Bob was named Cisco IT Manager of the year in 2005. Bob graduated from California State Polytechnic University, and is Six Sigma DMAIC trained.
At the UC Davis Health System, Bob will manage the IT operations center planned to open in February, the new IT service process now being integrated and improved, service guidelines, the new HP software application to manage customer requests, and all IT customer facing communications and support for the Health System. Contact Mike Minear, michael.minear@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu or Bob O’Connor, Robert.oconnor@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
New area to become IT Operations Center
An area on the second floor of the ASB building is being prepared to become the Operations Center for Information Technology. This area is being reconfigured to support the functions of a call center and disaster response center for technology support and management. The new operations center will seat 60 staff and also have shared workspaces for new technology deployment and disaster/event management. The center is scheduled to open in February. Contact Mike Minear, michael.minear@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu or Amy Mentjox, amy.mentjox@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
New customer service management software application to be deployed
With the acquisition of the HP OpenView probes and monitor software, the HP customer service application was also acquired. This software application is fully integrated with the technology asset, real-time probing, and monitoring functionality. The service application will provide enhanced tools, and support more sophisticated service response guidelines creation and usage. A guideline team representing all areas of IT technologies has been working to create the initial set of service response guidelines. IT is aiming to deploy the software in conjunction with the new IT Operations Center opening in February. Contact Mike Minear michael.minear@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu or Bob O’Connor, robert.oconnor@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Operational and Financial Systems
UCDHS employee health has been using an internally developed application that has not optimally supported their needs for some time. The new application STIX is an Employee Health Information system that will meet all data management requirements for health care workers. The system tracks routine immunizations and surveillance, manages all the data related to workers, compensation cases and non work-related incidents, and provides a comprehensive reporting module to create reports required for regulatory compliance and infection control. IT is currently working with the vendor to install and test the software. The system is planned to be in production by the end of January. Contact: Amy Mentjox, amy.mentjox@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Upgrade to coding software application used by Health Information Management
The Quantim hardware configuration includes a total of 13 servers currently running on an Oracle platform. The software vendor QuadraMed has announced that the Oracle platform will no longer be supported after March 31 and has recommended that the database be converted from Oracle to Microsoft SQL for better support and performance. IT and Health Information Management staff have partnered to deploy the new database and application software versions and begin testing. Final system testing began in late November, and the new application version began production at the end of December. Contact: Amy Mentjox, amy.mentjox@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu or Mary Pat Curry, marypat.curry@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
National Drug Code changes to be made by spring
The National Drug Code (NDC) codes that describe drugs must be added to all Medic-Cal claims by April in order to ensure Medicaid/Medi-Cal can benefit from drug manufacturers rebates. IT is partnering with Pharmacy and Patient Accounting staff to design and make all required system changes to accommodate the addition of the NDC codes. The claims process will need to be changed as will changes to the charge entry screen in Epic/Rx, and facility and professional fee records. Contact: Amy Mentjox, amy.mentjox@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
OnBase document management system chosen for possible deployment
OnBase is a document management system that supports the scanning, storage and retrieval of paper documents, photographs, drawings, and other types of files. Each department can define the documents they wish to store and the key words to retrieve them. The system accommodates security functionality that controls access to documents and is implementing the system so that the majority of the work (retrieving and indexing documents) will be done via a Web browser.
Significant analysis was performed to choose the right vendor. OnBase has been used for some time by the UC Davis campus in the Chancellor’s office and for student records. OnBase will also work with the Epic EMR, and is used at a number of large Epic sites to scan and manage paper medical records. The Dean’s office went into production in the end of December, and UCDHS began testing the link to the Epic EMR this January for possible deployment in the spring. Contact: Amy Mentjox, amy.mentjox@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu