Overall support themes are primarily related to security and printing and they are being worked as quickly as possible.

If you experience any issues please contact the utmbconnect change center by calling extension 25200 option 4.

Provider Charging & Coding (February 2, 2013)

Appointment & Pre-Registration Conversion (March 15, 2013)

The utmbconnect project team is currently wrapping up preparations to get the system ready for this fully connected go-live, and is focused on making sure the transition is as smooth as possible.

On the evening of April 5, at midnight, the Epic system will be down for an estimated minimum 12-hour time period, pending any unforeseen difficulties. The project team has practiced this transition with several “mock” go-lives and is well prepared. All areas should prepare for this downtime by ensuring their teams are familiar with Epic downtime procedures. Invision will be available in a “view only” mode during this time.

It is anticipated that end-users may have questions or need assistance with the system once it is live. Therefore, as with the prior two go-live events, project team members will be staffing a Change Center on the first floor of the Administration Building on campus (please contact the Change Center by calling 409-772-5200, option 4).

Please be aware that call volumes are expected to be high during this go-live. A process for prioritization will be in place and issues will be handled according to their impact to the April 6 Fully Connected Go-Live. The team will address issues as quickly as possible.

In addition to having a helping hand just a phone call away, units and clinics will also be staffed with knowledgeable project team members, who will visit sites in rounds. A large group of representatives from Epic will also be on-site to help with the transition. You will be able to identify all of these individuals by their utmbconnect “C” buttons. They will be highly visible and available to assist with questions, documenting issues, or directing your questions to the right person if they don’t have the answer.

Some individuals may be involved in activities post go-live. For example, project executive leadership will participate in daily calls to discuss major impacts to patient care, revenue and productivity (or other major issues and concerns), while project leadership will participate in daily updates to review trends in issues and training updates that may be required. Access and Revenue Cycle Readiness (ARCR) members will meet at pre-determined dates post go-live to review metrics and develop plans to ensure everything is going according to plan.

It will be a busy and exciting time as we move our organization forward. There is a lot of change going on at once, but UTMB’s new Revenue Cycle system will assure our workflows align with state-of-the-art models and that we will offer new and exciting conveniences to our patients.

Thank you all for your hard work to make the utmbconnect project a success!

Faculty will have the ability to edit resident’s notes if needed to help keep the clinical documentation accurate and reflect the associated charges.

In the near future, physicians will have the ability to see their patient’s future appointments outside the clinical encounter as well as their own future schedule to help improve efficiencies.

Residents will continue placing professional charges in Epic in areas where they have been designated to do so.  For areas where residents are permitted to enter charges, E/M charges will become a requirement for closing ambulatory encounters.

All residents will also see an additional close encounter validation when seeing Medicare patients in which they have to specify if the patient was seen with or without the faculty. Charges placed by a resident will not be released until a faculty has cosigned the encounter.

Meanwhile, the Change Center that was established on-campus to support incoming questions and issues with the scheduling and registration systems, officially closed last Sunday (it will reopen for the April 6 go-live). During the Appointment Conversion and Pre-Registration Conversion, a total of 282 issues were logged and resolved.

In addition to the conversion activities, schedulers throughout the enterprise have been working in two scheduling systems, Invision and Epic, very successfully – all appointments requested for April and beyond are being scheduled in Cadence using new visit types and provider schedules. While most users will become more comfortable over time using Cadence, all are excited about the new Epic application, and have remarked on how quickly they are able to take care of their patients.

Another exciting feature of the go-live of this part of the system is the addition of a Real Time Eligibility (RTE) feature which allows staff to instantly verify insurance eligibility during the registration process, saving time making phone calls.

The Cadence build team is still working to make adjustments to the system to improve the functioning of the new scheduling system – thank you to everyone for your patience during this time. The final step of the go-live agenda for the Cadence-Prelude team is the addition of Check-in, Check-out functionality on April 8.

Thank you to all of the utmbconnect teams that made the conversion possible as well as the UTMB Dietary Services (Cafeteria) who supplied refreshments for the conversion weekends.

The winner was drawn March 8 at the Executive Steering Committee meeting by Chief Physician Executive, Dr. Rex McCallum, and Beth Hill, Associate Director, IS.

Contestants were asked to correctly answer 13 questions about the utmbconnect project to be eligible to win, and of the entries, 89 out of 114 were correct!

The image below (click to enlarge) shows an example of the first page of the new statement, which clearly shows the adjustments of total new charges and recent payments applied to the account followed by a single, easily-to-read balance owed. On the following pages of the statement, details reflect the specifics of each visit.
UTMB will now also offer a single point of customer service for patients to help streamline assistance with billing questions, instead of requiring our patients to call separate offices for hospital/clinic and provider charges, as it has been up until now.

In addition, in the clinic setting, Patient Services Specialists will be able to discuss outstanding balances and conveniently assist patients by collecting payments toward any balance due, helping the patient stay current with their health care financial responsibilities.

Throughout the Health System, we use Invision for scheduling and registering all patient appointments.  These Invision appointments are then interfaced to Epic, so that when clinicians log into Hyperspace, they are able to see their schedules for any particular clinic day, as well as appointment information and patient demographics.  At any one time, there are on average 90,000 appointments scheduled out over the next twelve months, with approximately 45,000 of these appointments scheduled in the next 30 days. These appointments, along with associated patient registration information, are all currently sitting in Invision.  The time is rapidly approaching when we will need to “convert” the appointments from the legacy system into the Epic Cadence system.

The conversion and pre-registration of all appointments scheduled in our legacy system for dates April 6 and beyond represents a complex and crucial transition from our old system to our new.  Effective March 15, our Cadence scheduling and Prelude registration systems will be live, and Invision will no longer interface appointments having a date of April 6 and beyond. 

Working weekends and through the April 6 go-live, a team of 200 trained scheduling and registration end-users will be converting all existing appointments to the new Cadence system.  In addition, they will be entering important patient registration information not currently interfaced to Epic, such as insurance information, and completing pre-registration.  The end result will be that come go-live April 6, all appointments currently in Invision will be in Cadence.

This unique challenge is made more difficult given that during this three-week period, our staff will be live and working in two different systems. While the interfaces will be turned off for appointments beyond April 6, Invision will still be sending over to Epic all appointments scheduled for a date occurring between March 15 and April 6.  Sound complicated?  Just a little bit.  For example, if a patient calls on March 19 and requests an appointment for March 25, the scheduler will make the appointment in INVISION and it will be interfaced to Epic so that on March 25 the clinician will see it on the schedule.  However, if the patient calls on March 19 and requests an appointment for April 11, the scheduler will make the appointment in Cadence. Cancelations and reschedules will follow the same 2 system process.

All of the Invision scheduling and registration interfaces will be turned off with April 6 Connect go-live, and end-users will work only in the new Epic systems.  Invision will remain available for review of information and work to complete the billing of any visits prior to April 6.

As expected with all major changes, questions and issues arose, but the necessary technical and operational support was in place to resolve any system issues and answer questions, easing the process.

As of noon on February 6, approximately 114 issues had been logged by both floor support and the Change Center. These issues included questions about how to perform certain functions, requests for access to certain features, and requests for new functionality not previously included in utmbconnect .

As users adjust to the new processes involved with using utmbconnect, the volume of calls and floor support questions is expected to decrease.

The Change Center hours will be adjusted  to reflect the decrease in volume and will ramp back up to support the Pre-registration and Schedule conversions scheduled to occur in March. Although the Change Center is temporarily closed due to these low call volumes, suport information can be found at www.utmb.edu/connect/Support

Congratulations on a successful cutover and go-live!

Click on a graphic for larger version…