VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER – Nashville, TN

Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is a 600 bed, comprehensive healthcare facility dedicated to patient care, research, and biomedical education. Its reputation for excellence in each of these areas has made Vanderbilt a major patient referral center for the Mid-South. The hospital is home to the region's only Level I Trauma Center as well as the region's only Level IV Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. VUMC uses McKesson Healthquest for inpatient registration, scheduling and ADT, and they use Epic for outpatient services. VUMC also uses an internally developed electronic health record for both inpatient and outpatient clinical information. 

VUMC contracted with Just Associates to provide an in-depth review of the Patient Access Assessment Report performed by Vanderbilt. This project included review of patient access policies, procedures and performance and recommendations to mitigate duplicate record creation. Additionally, Just Associates was asked to provide recommendations regarding the Epic Identity application. 

VUMC uses McKesson Healthquest for inpatient registration, scheduling and ADT and they use Epic for outpatient services. VUMC also uses an internally developed electronic health record for both inpatient and outpatient clinical information and an internally developed application for enterprise master person index functions, which is called the Enterprise Patient Index (EPI). With a large number of people registering patients in their information systems, the HIM department was concerned about the consistency of the registration process across multiple locations. They believed that their decentralized registration process was contributing to data integrity problems. Just Associates was asked to assess the current patient registration process and make recommendations to reduce the number of duplicate records created.

Patient Access Consulting

Just Associates conducted an initial review of current Patient Registration/Patient Access Policies and Procedures for Central Scheduling, Admitting, Emergency Room, Laboratory, Radiology and Ambulatory Surgery. Next, we observed, documented and confirmed the actual patient access management processes. Evaluation of facility naming conventions and search routines as well as a review of training procedures for Patient Access staff was also completed. Finally, patient identity management issues at the point of patient registration were documented and recommended actions to improve patient identity management policies and procedures were presented by Just Associates.

EMPI Consulting

With a goal of reducing the number of errors that create data integrity issues within their information systems and preventing the creation of duplicates once the MPI was cleansed, VUMC was evaluating the implementation of Epic Identity. In addition to the evaluation of people and processes, VUMC requested that Just Associates provide recommendations regarding the Epic Identity application. This included performing a gap analysis of the current Epic scheduling / registration application versus the desired future state; reviewing Epic Identity’s capabilities and providing a high level description of how the Epic Identity’s features would address reduction of duplicate creation; identifying pros and cons associated with implementing Epic Identity and providing recommendations regarding staff training needed for the roll out of Epic Identity.