Soarian Clinicals and Soarian Financials Legacy Support Case Study

UMass Memorial Health, Worcester, Massachusetts

About the Client

UMass Memorial Health (UMass) is the largest healthcare system in Central Massachusetts. It serves as the clinical partner of UMass Chan Medical School, with access to the latest technology, research, and clinical trials. The healthcare system includes UMass Memorial Medical Center, HealthAlliance-Clinton Hospital, Marlborough Hospital and Harrington Hospital. DNV-accredited, UMass has 1,177 beds with over 1,600 physicians on the active medical staff and over 12,000 employees.

Project Details

In January 2016, UMass selected Stoltenberg Consulting, now a Med Tech Solutions (MTS) company, to provide enterprise-wide legacy application support as the healthcare system transitioned to an integrated Epic environment. To ensure a successful engagement, the team invested time in understanding UMass’s workflows, operational priorities, and organizational culture, while simultaneously assessing ticket backlogs, support demands, and upcoming project initiatives.

MTS supported over 90 applications, including Oracle Cerner Soarian Financials and Clinicals, Pharmacy, NOVIUS, Syngo, Imagecast (RIS/PACS), Allscripts Touchworks (Altera), Carefusion/Pyxis, 3M, DBMotion, Pulsecheck, IDX, MEDITECH Lab and Hyland OnBase (LMR), while handling over 100 interfaces between systems. In a seamless transition, the MTS team cost-effectively absorbed internal responsibilities with just 48 resources. This was accomplished with 40 percent fewer resources than UMass originally staffed in these roles.

To further assist the client, MTS’ Financial Team Manager was asked by UMass to serve as their sole IT Representative on three of their highly strategic key department teams. These included the A/R Outsourcing Vendor Selection Committee, which created the RFP and awarded the outsourcing contract for all acute and physician business office legacy A/R; the Senior Executive Revenue Cycle Review Committee, which tracked monthly A/R metrics and set benchmarks for monthly revenue and cash collection; and the Senior Executive Laboratory Management Team, which led multiple lab analyzer upgrades and deployed a new specimen process and delivery system before the Epic go live. By collaborating and sharing extensive industry knowledge and deep project experiences, MTS assisted each of these UMass teams to fully prepare and plan for a successful, smooth Epic transition.

 

“[MTS] has quality people and will work with you on any issue. They are thorough in the work they do. They selected resources that had the skills, personality and work ethic to make it a successful assignment for both parties. Things can change in a heartbeat, and those same resources were flexible and capable of changing course – supporting new applications, helping to determine the best solution to a business problem and taking on additional applications not previously scoped.”

–Director of Applications, UMass Memorial Health

 

Because of the trusted partnership and MTS’ ability to quickly move into and fulfill the legacy support positions, UMass’ internal staff could focus their undivided attention on the Epic migration to achieve greater stabilization across the care continuum. In addition to the full legacy EHR support daily activities, the MTS teams were instrumental in Epic transition projects, including data conversion assistance, extract definition, extract scheduling, storage migration, decommissioning, Epic cutover steps for legacy systems and interfaces, and Epic system validation meetings.

MTS created over 40 detailed step-by-step migration plans for legacy applications to ensure a successful and complete Epic cutover during the go-live. These plans included scoping user accounts to modify; assessing interfaces to switch out or remain; monitoring day-end processes for full completion; and communicating hourly with the bridge line for ancillary department workflows. Post go-live, UMass asked the MTS team for continued support to assist with the legacy applications’ archive and decommission project. The MTS team validated extract results and reviewed the quality of archived data for UMass and the archive vendor’s team.

Project Highlights:

• Supported over 90 applications
• Handled over 100 interfaces between systems
• Utilized 40 percent fewer staff for significant resource savings
• When UMass changed the project scope to include another hospital, MTS’ flexibility seamlessly incorporated the additional facility within the project scope
• Legacy support smoothly transitioned into archive and decommissioning work
• Provided leadership as IT representative on A/R Outsourcing Committee
• Served as IT representative for committee overseeing lab migration to Epic
• Created comprehensive migration plans for all supported legacy systems

Legacy Support

As clients migrate to new EHRs, revenue applications, or ancillary systems, MTS’ 3X Best in KLAS legacy support team provides 24/7 support, vendor coordination, and monthly maintenance to meet or exceed all SLAs for retiring systems and applications. Hospitals and health systems generate greater stabilization across the care continuum during system transitions with confidence that clinical, business office, and operational staff can smoothly maintain patient care processes and daily tasks. With MTS’ agile resources, clients can quickly flex and expand project scope to include data archival, system sunsetting, or new system go-live support as requested.

 

Planning an Epic migration? Contact Med Tech Solutions to streamline legacy application support, data archiving, system decommissioning, and go-live readiness across your healthcare organization.