Huggins Hospital (Wolfeboro, NH) is a 25-bed non-profit community hospital designated as a Critical Access Hospital.
Huggins Hospital’s mission is to empower the fulfillment of life through better health.
The hospital provides primary care in seven offices, including four off-site offices, one pediatric office and one internal medicine office. Other provider offices include a general surgery office, a women’s health office and an orthopedic surgery office. Huggins Hospital also offers emergency medicine, diagnostic services, rehabilitation and specialty services to NH’s Eastern Lakes Region population of 30,000 residents – a population that inflates to approximately 120,000 seasonal residents and visitors in the summer months.
An impactful upgrade
Huggins Hospital went live with Sunrise™ Ambulatory and Sunrise™ Registration/Scheduling 17.3, and Sunrise™ Financial Manager (SFM Amby Only) 17.3, on June 1, 2020, followed by an iPRO Anesthesia Integration go-live on Monday, June 15. Huggins Hospital scheduled a rolling implementation for its provider offices; with four offices on June 1, three more offices on June 22 and the last three offices on July 13.
From the onset of the project, Huggins Hospital’s office providers and staff were engaged in the success of the go-live and working on process improvements that would provide a better patient and user experience. The organization put a strategic emphasis on data conversion efforts – both manual and programmatic – to ease the transition to the new EMR.
The Allscripts Proactive Performance Operations (PPO) team served an integral role throughout the activation and post-activation process in quickly identifying, triaging and resolving issues, as well as proactively identifying areas of concern.
The Allscripts PPO team worked hand-in-hand with the Huggins Hospital’s Activation Command Center throughout the activation process, which enabled the seamless handoff of technical items for engagement and management while freeing up bandwidth for the Command Center staff to focus on additional priorities. This parallel engagement greatly enhanced issue throughput and, therefore, end-user satisfaction.
“Throughout the implementation, the Huggins team was a true partner working in unison with Allscripts towards a common goal of a successful activation of Sunrise™ Ambulatory and Financial Manager,” Allscripts Program Director, Client Delivery Services George Zaharchak said.
Positive activation results
The Huggins Hospital team put forth a tremendous effort and were well prepared for the activation and, as a result, experienced very few critical issues with the activation. The teams used Allscripts® Clinical Performance Management (CPM) to provide early quality assurance analyses and reports to monitor key workflows, such as check-in registration accuracy, provider orders tracking and reconciliation, and also the adoption of Secure Health Messaging/Phone Note usage. The Huggins Hospital team was also dedicated and focused on the ability to produce timely and accurate claims and was able to demonstrate that ability quickly in the Activation process.
Allscripts was a true partner, working side-by-side with a common goal of the most successful implementation and activation possible.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Huggins Hospital had to switch to virtual Allscripts support. With this change, the Huggins Hospital team stepped up and identified superusers – including three providers – to provide the needed support to the practices for the go-live. The entire activation was coordinated via a virtual command center. The go-live experienced a low number of issues, which is a testament to the level of engagement and testing performed by the Huggins Hospital team leading up to the activation.
The positive attitude of the Huggins Hospital team created an environment driven by collaboration and teamwork, with the hospital’s family values shining through in every interaction with each other and the patients.
Thank you to the Huggins Hospital team who made the transition as smooth as possible and thank you to Allscripts for being a true partner in healthcare delivery.
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on Allscripts' website.
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