UT Health San Antonio and University Health System (UHS) are celebrating the conclusion of a huge accomplishment years in the making — UHS has made the transition from Sunrise to Epic.

UT Health San Antonio has been successfully using and expanding its use of Epic’s enterprise tools for more than a decade. Epic is an electronic medical record (EMR) platform and the world leader for securely storing and organizing patients’ medical records, providing revenue cycle efficiency tools and designing practice management solutions for hospitals and outpatient practices.

UHS went “live” with Epic on Saturday, July 11 at 4 a.m.

“It was a long and arduous two-year journey,” said Andrew Krecek, clinical information officer for UT Health Physicians. “The UT Health Physicians-IT and UHS-IT teams have worked diligently and collaboratively in developing a robust and integrated platform connecting the two Epic systems.”

The connection between the two, separate Epic systems is a huge leap in the right direction for patients and providers at both health care systems, said Bob Leverence, MD, FACP, chief medical officer at UT Health Physicians.

“Epic is designed with technological sophistication that allows a patient’s medical record to be seamlessly and securely shared between the care teams at both institutions,” he said. “That’s one reason we are thrilled UHS has adopted the Epic platform. Not only will it improve the level of care we can provide patients, it allows our providers to communicate efficiently and effectively about our shared patients.”

The sharing of medical records between separate hospitals and practices is an important topic in today’s medical community. As patients’ health care choices expand, they are likely to see different doctors and undergo procedures or surgeries at multiple places. At each place, the patient has a separate medical record created for them, filled with important details like medications, lab results, surgical notes and other information their primary doctor or surgeon should know about. As time goes on, this leads to disorganized, even missing, medical records, which ultimately diminishes the level of care any clinician could provide that patient.

Epic has a tool for that, too. UT Health San Antonio uses Care Everywhere to securely request and send patient records, even with practices that don’t use Epic.

“The process of requesting and receiving records from multiple places can be difficult, time-consuming and sometimes impossible,” said Dr. Leverence. “A complete medical record is a paramount service to the patient. The more medical history a doctor has about their patient, the more equipped they are to provide a personalized treatment plan that promises the most successful outcome.”

Issues caused by the complicated process of sharing records are now solved thanks to the new connection between the UT Health Physicians and UHS Epic systems. “Now we have seamless access to our patients’ pre-operative and other history records from our partner institution, just as they do from ours.” said Dr. Leverence. “It’s a connection that promises to improve the level of care we provide our patients, reduce overall health care costs and make communication between providers more efficient than ever.”

Dr. Leverence is also looking forward to expansion into Epic’s other tools, like Secure Chat and Haiku. Secure Chat is Epic’s method for care teams to have secure, HIPAA-compliant group chats about a patient, and Haiku is an Epic app that allows providers to have secure access to their patient’s EMR from their mobile devices.

Because the providers and staff at UT Health Physicians are already familiar with Epic, it is anticipated they will easily be able to work within the UHS instance of the tool.

Should questions or issues arise, the Epic team is available to help. You can access the UT Health Physicians virtual Epic red coats from the Epic home screen. At UHS there are Epic team members wearing bright blue “Epic Team” shirts located throughout the hospital and RBG who are ready to assist. You may also contact the helpdesk at 210-358-4059 and press #9 for Epic Support, or email them at Epic.Training@uhs-sa.com and provide:

• Patient MRN (if you are clinical staff)
• Your name
• Your department
• Your call back number and email
• The hours you are available to receive calls