By Craig Norquist, MD, chief medical information officer

Upcoming CTEC meeting in September

At the next Clinician Technology Experience Council (CTEC) meeting, we’ll review the results from the recently completed EHR Experience Survey. The survey closed in July, and we had a reasonable amount of participation that should provide valuable feedback and help guide our priorities moving forward.

We’ll also discuss how AI is being used in healthcare today. We’ll explore how Microsoft Copilot and specialty-specific AI tools can help automate tasks such as pulling in data from wearable devices (such as CGMs and sleep trackers), creating easy-to-understand discharge instructions for patients and searching clinical notes to quickly identify important information.

We’re open to additional topics for discussion based on your requests. Please feel free to reach out with ideas.

Not part of CTEC?

Sign up here to have meetings added to your calendar. CTEC meetings are held every other month.

Epic note editing workflow update

Informatics, IT and HIM are working together, under the guidance of Legal and Compliance, to minimize the risk associated with individuals editing another clinician’s notes and making it appear as if they’re the original author.

While notes are auditable and the original author can always be identified, there are alternative workflows that better distinguish the original author from the subsequent physician or APP for patients and others reviewing the medical record. These include attestation, co-signature and note-sharing workflows.

As part of this effort, we’re strategically and systematically removing the ability for individuals to edit another clinician’s note and instead asking you to use attestation or co-signature options.

If you have a unique use case where this approach isn’t appropriate, please let us know, so we can determine whether an exception is needed. Our goal is to ensure there are few, if any, situations in which one person is changing another person’s note.

November Epic upgrade

As a reminder, Epic will undergo another upgrade in November. In September, we’ll begin reviewing the upgrade features in preparation for the change.

The Informatics and IT teams will be requesting time during department meetings to demonstrate as many of the upgrade features as possible. This will not be a voting or selection process, but rather an opportunity to work together to ensure we’re aware of and prepared for the upcoming changes.

Many ask why we need to keep changing when it takes significant effort to build solid and consistent processes. There are several reasons:

• New or optimized features are often introduced to help improve efficiencies and make your work better.
• Some features require updates when they don’t work as intended.
• Security updates are necessary as new vulnerabilities are uncovered.

It’s like updating your smartphone or home computer, but on a much larger scale. We do our best to ensure we continue moving in the right direction while minimizing changes that feel like a step backward.

Smart-User and Physician Builder programs

As always, anyone interested in additional Epic training, improving efficiencies or creating helpful features is encouraged to reach out to Brandon Martinez or me for available opportunities.

Those in the cohort will receive early access to new tools in Epic and, when available, other technology tools.