Mount Nittany Health has completed its Epic go-live after choosing an uncommon path for a smaller health system: implementing the EHR independently rather than through a larger health system’s Community Connect program.
The State College, Pa.-based health system went live with Epic on May 30. For the big-bang go-live, Mount Nittany Health had teams onsite May 29 preparing inpatient and emergency department patients for the cutover.
“We went down at midnight and came back up as planned with Epic at 4 a.m. on the dot. Things have been going very smoothly since then,” Diane Hunt, MD, chief health information officer of Mount Nittany Health, told Becker’s.
The health system made the deliberate decision to implement Epic independently rather than through a Community Connect model, which allows smaller and independent healthcare organizations to use Epic’s EHR by partnering with a larger health system that already has an Epic license.
“We believe this was the right decision for our organization,” Dr. Hunt said. “We wanted to bring best-in-class technology to the community, our providers and our patients, who expect the best. We felt that having the ability to drive our own optimization strategy, system build and overall use of Epic would be essential to meeting those needs.”
Dr. Hunt has been through multiple Epic implementations and said Mount Nittany’s culture was the deciding factor in pursuing an independent implementation.
“Everyone was on board — from our physicians and executives to our board members,” she said. “There was a shared commitment to doing this for the community, and that made all the difference.”
The new EHR system will allow Mount Nittany to take advantage of record sharing through Care Everywhere with organizations including Geisinger in Danville, Pa., and UPMC in Pittsburgh.
The Epic implementation also expands the health system’s AI capabilities.
“Since we launched the project, Epic has introduced some fantastic AI functionality. We’ve turned on many of those tools,” Dr. Hunt said.
For example, Mount Nittany plans to deploy Epic’s AI-powered charting tool, Chart with Art, for ambulatory clinicians and is considering expanding it to inpatient physicians as those capabilities become available.
“We’re also using summarization tools in both inpatient and ambulatory settings,” Dr. Hunt said. “Even though we’re only a couple of days into the go-live, those tools are already proving valuable. We didn’t originally anticipate AI being such a major differentiator, but it’s become something clinicians are talking about frequently.”
For Dr. Hunt, the Epic implementation is only the beginning.
“I came to Mount Nittany initially to implement Epic, but now the exciting part starts,” she said. “We have access to data in ways we’ve never had before, and we have tools that can help both clinicians and patients. We’ve put the foundation in place, and now we can focus on using those capabilities to improve care and make a meaningful difference for our patients.”
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