Care One Paves the Way for Sustainability, Efficiency Across the System
As the Albany Med Health System introduces our unified brand identity to our communities, efforts remain strong to come together within our campuses as well. Through Care One—a multi-year project to create a single, System-wide electronic medical record (EMR) and enterprise resource planning process (ERP)—we will be able to be there for our patients like never before and redefine the future of health care in our region.
Our campuses currently operate on disparate systems that are unable to communicate from one location to the other for many day-to-day operations —from clinical to finances to supply chain. At the completion of Care One in 2024, the Albany Med Health System will share resources and integrate services, giving us the ability to treat our patients as a single health system that spans the Capital Region.
“Care One is central to our growth and future as a health system,” said Fran Spreer Albert, executive vice president, chief operating officer, and chief financial officer at Albany Medical Center. “This project is key to our security, efficiency, and, ultimately, our sustainability so that we can best meet the needs of our patients and support our incredible workforce.”
Among our Care One efforts is the creation of an EMR, which will be housed by Epic. This integrated EMR will not only give patients better insight into their own health information and boost their experience with an easily accessible online patient portal, but it will also increase the flow of communication between clinicians throughout our hospitals. Our health care providers will be able to share critical patient information as well as research.
Currently, the EMR project teams are in the pre-work phase, making key decisions about how Epic will function within our organization. Soon, work will kick into high gear as the project enters the build phase on Nov. 1, 2022. This is when colleagues from each hospital will convene in workgroups—the decision-making bodies that will shape this project—to begin configuring our EMR.
While the EMR aligns clinical operations, the ERP, operating through Workday, will integrate business practices such as those related to revenue cycle and supply chain. The project kicked off on March 1, 2022 and is now in the architecture and configuration phase, where the project team is working hard to construct the Albany Med Health System’s Workday tenant and prepare for testing at the beginning of 2023.
For the last several months, ERP project members have been working to consolidate and integrate data across campuses such as supplier and customer accounts and streamline supply chain processes. In September, the team came together for customer confirmation sessions, which allowed them to view the first iterations of the Workday build, help finalize system configuration, and develop a testing plan.
Care One is slated to conclude in 2024, with the ERP going live in the summer of 2023 at each System hospital, practice location, and Visiting Nurses. The EMR is set to go live at Albany Medical Center in the first quarter of 2024, followed by the Columbia Memorial Health, Glens Falls Hospital, and Saratoga Hospital campuses later in the year.