This week Epic held its annual user group meeting (#UCG2012 or #EPICUCG), complete with a full-stage Journey tribute, Wayne and Garth and tantalizing promises of neat features to come.
Because we weren’t at the conference, we took a dive into the tweetstream to see what some of the highlights were.
A big crowd
Attendance at the event was enormous, even by the standards of jaded little me:
RT @gruntdoc: #EPIC #EPICUGM 14K here, about 7.4K are clients, rest Epic staff; 10 countries rep’d. #UGM2012
— Luis Saldana (@lsaldanamd) September 11, 2012
Funny business
The event kickoff included a tribute to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” presumably performed by Epic’s multitalented staffers. I liked the Wayne’s World kicker at the end, as did the audience, which seemed to do a lot of un-IT-like giggling.
Happy smiling people
If the tweets are any indication, a fair number of attendees found #UCG2012 to be something of a rush:
the best part about #ugm2012 … knowing I’m not the only one out there who is truly excited about what this software can do. truly #epic
— Chuck Bedel (@DRBEDEL) September 11, 2012
Fascinating factoids
Along the way, attendees did some of Epic’s PR on their own, tweeting such facts as:
RT @nickgenes: CEO Judy Faulkner says Epic is installed in over half of US academic medical centers #UGM2012Wow! That’s wild
— Matthew Rogers (@RogersMatthew) September 11, 2012
And there was this interesting note on the relationship between advanced EMR deployment and being an Epic customer:
RT @nickgenes: Only 1.2% of US hospitals are at top HIMSS stage for #EHR integration — and 3/4 of those hospitals are at Epic’s #UGM2012
— MTS Healthcare (@mtshealthcare) September 11, 2012
Features afoot
All of the enthusiasm was fine. I get it: Rah rah rah Yay Epic! But on to some meatier stuff. Apparently some interesting new features are on the way:
In upcoming Epic release, patients will be able to log into myChart and download their records to a PDF #UGM2012
— Robert S. Miller, MD (@rsm2800) September 12, 2012
#ugm2012 good news, Epic is going to have an opt-in for benchmarking across Epic hospital systems. Terrific!
— GruntDoc (@gruntdoc) September 12, 2012
Mobile payments to be built into Epic myChart. Can also sign up via mobile for paperless statements #UGM2012
— Robert S. Miller, MD (@rsm2800) September 12, 2012
Sadly, though, on the subject of interoperability, no Original Thoughts seemed to be under discussion:
Epic will use protocols from #DirectProject to push information to outside EHRs #UGM2012
— Robert S. Miller, MD (@rsm2800) September 12, 2012
Maybe the whole “walled garden” thing will be fixed by, oh, UCG2020?
I was recently introduced to MyChart. Looks nice, but it left me with questions. For instance, a patient I know has had lab tests – in house in her doctor’s hospital related practice. None of the results show up in MyChart even though there’s a place for it. There’s no way to make appointments (except an email request), prescription info seems incomplete.
For what it does do it seems easy to use, though.
As to EPIC Ambulatory, the doctor had a couple issues; way to many times getting in and out of screens to get things done, and ePrescribe was a pain for her. In particular, it let her prescribe an antibiotic that was not only not in formulary, it would have cost the patient about $600 for a week or 2 of doses. Not cool.
[…] already posted a nice summary of the things coming out of the Epic UGM 2012 including a really great opening tribute video using Journey and a Wayne’s World kicker. Just […]