EHR Go-Live Activation – Big-Bang or a Phased Approach?
By Zack Tisch

After completing the RFP process and determining which vendor and products will be part of the implementation, the real fun begins. Should the organization deploy this change in a single event — typically referred to as a big bang go-live – or would a methodical, phased approach be a better fit?

At first glance, a big bang can feel aggressive, particularly in a healthcare environment where risk can mean significant consequences, not only to organizational financial health, but potentially to quality and patient safety. This surface analysis can be, misleading however, and more detailed consideration often reveals challenges to a phased approach that can be even more significant, particularly for multi-hospital organizations that may be on different core clinical or financial software platforms. The following considerations are a start to determining which approach may be best for a given organization.

Carefully categorizing likely risks and how to manage them is a major factor in determining a go-live activation approach. A successful go-live is one where known risks are decisively and quickly managed and unknown risks are quickly analyzed and attacked. Both activation approaches can be equally successful, but there are specific tasks and processes that should be put in place prior to go-live to help support the approach.

For example, with a big-bang go-live, technical considerations become primary due to the volume of users and equipment that will be interacting with the system at the same time. Is security configured correctly? Can all users log in? Have they verified this in the production environment prior to go-live? With a phased install consisting of a smaller initial pilot, security, login, printing, and hardware issues may not be as pressing.

On the other hand, with a large-scale big bang featuring potentially thousands of users and workstations, the first few days or week of go-live can easily be spent just resolving technical issues that could have been sorted out with a thorough pre-live plan. This is a known risk and I would strongly advocate as much testing in production with real hardware and actual end users as possible, regardless of the chosen go-live approach.

Outside of technical issues, another key risk for most EHR go-lives is operational change and how well clinicians, front desk, and back-office staff accept and adopt the new workflow changes and tools. With a phased install, there is the luxury of being able to portion this change over time, reducing end-user anxiety and the amount of information they need to process and retain from training. However, one major drawback is that with a phased go-live, there will often be interim workflows, requiring end users to learn a new process and then unlearn aspects of that process shortly thereafter.

One key area in the organization to evaluate for potential risks is physician coding, particularly on the outpatient …read more

Source:: http://histalk2.com/2015/01/30/readers-write-ehr-go-live-activation-big-bang-or-a-phased-approach/