Dear Marin Community Clinics Family,
It’s official: As of this morning, Marin Community Clinics has “gone live” with Epic – our new Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. I wanted to update you on this enormous undertaking, as the transition impacts every part of our organization. This upgrade brings tremendous benefits to our care teams and patient community, and will improve the efficiency of our care delivery.
What is Epic?
It’s an EHR system that allows users – including patients and providers – to securely view and manage the most up-to-date version of a digital patient chart. It’s the backbone of all patient information, and the same technology used by major health care providers across the industry (including MarinHealth, Kaiser Permanente, and UCSF) throughout the Bay Area and the world.
Transitioning to Epic at Marin Community Clinics involves combining multiple EHRs into a single platform – one that is seamlessly connected to external care networks including hospitals, other clinics, rehab centers, private practices, etc.
What are the key benefits?
No more waiting. Both patients and providers will have immediate and secure access to pertinent information: Medication history, details about past procedures, when and where a patient was last treated – this type of shared information is essential to excellent care.
Improved communication and efficiency: That means better communication within Marin Community Clinics, between MCC and other care networks, and between patients and providers. Boosting communication efficiency across the board enables an improved experience.
With MyChart, Epic’s patient portal, patients will soon have better access to portions of their medical record – from anywhere.
What are the challenges involved during the transition?
Implementing such a complex technological change throughout the entire organization requires extensive, on-going training. We are expecting some delays in service as our team gets comfortable working in the new environment over the next few weeks.
Leading up to today, we have been preparing and training for this transition for months under the direction of Chief Information Officer Leah Canvasser. At this time, we have our “eyes on the prize” – an improved experience for staff and patients.
We expect this to take time to fully ramp up. Pertinent information for patients will be shared at marinclinic.org/epic. Today we have taken a huge step forward. I look forward to sharing news of our successful transition in the months ahead!
Sincerely,
Mitesh Popat, MD, MPH
Chief Executive Officer