UTHealthCONNECT

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Brief:

In 2019, a decision was made to switch EMRs (electronic medical records) to the Epic application. The project was dubbed UTHealthCONNECT. The project began in February of 2020 with a target completion of May 2021. This implementation required building the Epic system and creating new curriculum to train thousands of staff on the new system and new processes designed to promote efficiency and productivity.

The Problem:

I was tasked with designing curriculum to train new users in Epic (a healthcare software used in hospitals and clinics to manage patient information, billing, and other day to day functions). This design involved speaking with users and stakeholders to ensure that training would cover all required material and properly present new workflows.

Client:

UTHealth and UT Physicians Clinics throughout the greater Houston area.

My Role:

Principal Trainer Cadence and Prelude Applications.

User Research

User Interviews

In February 2020, we set out to interview users from a variety of roles and departments. The goal of the interviews was to gain insight on the day to day processes of users with the current system as well as communicate potential changes due to the new system.  The departments that saw the bulk of patients were selected to be interviewed, including family medicine, orthopedics, cardiology, and a few others.

Key Takeaways:

Spreadsheet

Notes from interviews were compiled onto a spreadsheet to be used for reference during the curriculum design process. All notes were categorized by user roles. The spreadsheet was used as reference during the curriculum designing process to address users' concerns from the interviews and address potential questions.

Design

Curriculum Design and Review

Epic provided templates to begin the curriculum writing process. The templates were used to validate processes that were going to be followed and built within UTHealth's specific instance of Epic. Testing of the processes within the system was used to validate user flows as well as information from the interviews. 

There was a timeline to have 5 sprints of different curriculum to be designed, tested, reviewed by the CRB (curriculum review board), and iterated. The result of the sprints was the creation of 7 courses to train front desk and support staff. Due to COVID-19 the entire process was done virtually via WebEx.

Virtual Training

August 2020, the decision was made to move all training to a virtual environment. All curriculum was converted to be done virtually instead of in person.

Training System Build

December 2020, a copy of the system was created to be used for training only. I was tasked with creating patients to be used with the curriculum that was designed. This resulted in alterations to the curriculum to fit the abilities of the training environment. Additionally, I reached out to managers for feedback regarding more realistic scenarios so that training end users would be more relatable and realistic. 

Testing

Pilot Training

January 2021, pilot training was conducted with stakeholders to provide final feedback before training began in February 2021. Pilot training took 5 days to complete and resulted in further iterations of the curriculum. After those iterations were approved by the stakeholders, it was used to train additional trainers.

Implementation

Go Live Training

Go Live Training began in February 2021 with a small group of initial users. This was expanded to the entire institution in March 2021. My team consisted of 6 other trainers who trained the curriculum or supported the virtual classes. I made modifications to training as were necessary.