In 2016, Vanderbilt Home Care found itself looking for a new electronic health record (EHR) system, and it happened that Vanderbilt University Medical Center was about to shut off its legacy homegrown EHR in favor of commercial software from Epic Systems Corp., based in Verona, Wisconsin. In the end, for various technical reasons, VUMC in 2016 chose another vendor for home care software.
“By 2023, we were eager for another change. And it turned out that Epic had since become a leading home care vendor,” said Amy Harrison, RN, MSN, president, Vanderbilt Home Care. “The company was able to work with our team to adapt its product to suit Vanderbilt’s needs.”
This year, on Jan. 16, more than six years after the VUMC main campus went live on Epic, Vanderbilt Home Care followed suit. This is enabling providers across VUMC to have a more complete view of their patients’ care at home.
“The primary benefit is transparency,” Harrison said. “Providers can see what we’re doing; they can see how their patient responded to their care. It’s all considered one complete medical record across the hospital, clinic, and now also in the patient’s home.”
Harrison said Epic’s robust data and reporting capabilities also aid billing and other internal processes. “We couldn’t have really asked for a better platform. They took our input and built it based on our specific needs.”
Vanderbilt Home Care, with some 300 employees and an average daily census of around 750 patients, provides a variety of home care services including nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, medical social work and round-the-clock private duty services.