these organizations. What we accomplished together will shape how we care for our communities for years to come, and I am incredibly proud of our teams.” Cedillo is Chief Operating Officer for Partner Hospitals in the consortium. She played a key role in the 18 months of planning and training to upgrade from the hospitals’ former EHR systems. “It took a lot of collaboration and communication,” she said, “facilitated by week after week of disciplined, specific engagements where everyone was at the table, saying their piece, thinking through things, sometimes disagreeing – and always trying to point back to being patient-centric. Patient first.” ‘We Got It’ All that teamwork paid off in a smooth launch. “Three days in,” Cedillo said, “I was talking to floor nurses, and they’re saying, ‘Yeah, we got it. Look at this. Look, you can do this with it.’ “They’re saying, ‘This is so much easier.’ Or, ‘I can find things so much better.’ Or, ‘It just makes sense.’” In fact, Cedillo said, “Our nursing staff across all of our facilities have been absolute rock stars in this. Nursing in particular has just wrapped their arms around it and really figured it out and embraced Epic.” Nurses have especially liked the Brain. That’s a system tool that gives each nurse their own personalized hour-by-hour electronic daily planner and worksheet. “It’s this place where they can put all the things that they used to either have to write on little notes or keep in their head,” Cedillo said. “They can just park it all there to help them remember.” Meet and Exceed the Needs Everything about the upgrade was designed in line with Covington County Hospital’s vision “to meet and exceed the needs and expectations of our patients by continually improving the quality of our services.” “You don’t usually see an independent, small, rural hospital all alone going live with Epic,” Cedillo said. “The way to do that is through this unique approach that we have, where we’re all collaborating for the greater good of our region.” Continual Improvement And the benefits will keep building. Epic designs its systems to continually advance and improve as new features become available and its clients’ needs change. “It will always be growing, developing, and becoming ‘more’ – which is what you want!” Cedillo said. “Because healthcare is like that. I mean, good night, look at how much it changes every year. You have to have a tool that’s as flexible as the environment in which we’re working.” LEARN MORE Scan the QR code to download MyChart
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