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DPH details EPIC rollout plan, staffing needs and training schedule ahead of Aug. 3, 2019 go-live
Summary
Acting CIO Winona Mandolovich told the Health Commission the DPH aims to go live on Aug. 3, 2019 with EPIC after a phased testing and training program; she flagged staffing gaps, dozens of vendor contracts and tens of thousands of training hours as near-term priorities.
Acting Chief Information Officer Winona Mandolovich told the San Francisco Department of Public Health Commission that the department is on track for an Aug. 3, 2019 go-live for its EPIC electronic health record rollout, but that the timeline requires intensive testing, training and hiring.
Mandolovich said the IT team has modernized core infrastructure ahead of the implementation: 77 network closets are being upgraded (38 complete), the department has virtualized "over 800 servers" with about 75 remaining, and network uptime is holding near 99.93 percent. She said users have seen measurable performance gains: boot times fell from 88 seconds to 31 and time-to-first-application from 157 seconds to 71.
"EPIC is our number 1 project," Mandolovich said, and summarized the program timeline: build completion in late November, testing through next May, training beginning May 30 and a go-live on Aug. 3, 2019, followed by post-live support. She added the implementation uses EPIC's foundation to accelerate work but acknowledged the schedule is compressed.
Albert Yoo, chief health informatics officer, described the organizational-change effort supporting the technical build, including domain groups, clinical system design sessions and super-user planning. Yoo told commissioners the program has identified more than 21,000 configuration decisions and expects roughly 10,000 end users will require training, averaging about 23 hours per person and totaling an estimated 230,000 training hours across the organization.
Mandolovich flagged several operational risks and mitigation steps: roughly 51 IT positions are open and the department is actively recruiting a permanent EPIC program director and a chief information security officer; 85 third-party vendor contracts will be needed and 125 interfaces will connect to EPIC. She also said the department is preparing to decommission about 55 legacy systems and to use new service-management tools to track incidents and requests.
"We have virtualized over 800 servers. We have about 75 left to go," Mandolovich said, noting that virtualization improves redundancy and reduces outages. Yoo emphasized the need for a strong training and super-user program to maintain operations during training and at go-live.
The commissioners asked for more visual comparisons to prior schedules and for a breakdown of e-learning versus in-person training; Mandolovich and Yoo said those details were being finalized and would be reported back to the commission.
Next steps: the department will finalize the training mix and vendor RFQ responses, continue recruitment for key IT and EPIC roles, and return to the commission with more granular scheduling and performance metrics before the training phase begins.
