When does your clinic go live with CareConnect?

Schedule details rollout of clinical functions at 200+ clinics

Starting July 1, 2012, the entire health system -- including outpatient clinics (except UCLA Santa Monica Bay Physicians) -- will use CareConnect for patient access and billing services. Whether clinicians will be using CareConnect instead of paper charts to document visits, however, depends on when a particular clinic is scheduled to go live with clinical functions.

CareConnect's clinical functionality, which includes computerized physician order entry and documentation, will be phased into use at the clinics over a 15-month period. It will happen in four groups, from July 2012 to September 2013. (View the ambulatory rollout schedule.) Groups are divided into waves, with a number of clinics scheduled to go live every four weeks. At the end of 13 waves, all clinics will be using the full suite of CareConnect functionality.

To get ready to implement CareConnect's clinical functionality, staff and physicians will receive training within four weeks of their clinic's go-live. Each clinic will have a dedicated CareConnect team working with it for eight weeks surrounding its go-live date. The team's focus will be on the remaining clinic-specific content, finalizing order routing, completing a dress rehearsal, training, and providing "at-the-elbow" support during and after go-live.

Many factors went into determining when a clinic would go live:

• Complexity of specialty documentation and clinics with multiple specialties -- primary care clinics build the foundation of the chart.
• Technical readiness -- the current landscape of end-user devices/what needs to be done to prepare.
• Dependencies with other go-live timings.
• To the extent feasible, maximize incentives provided by meaningful use -- an incentive program run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that rewards investment in electronic health records. (Click here for a definition of "meaningful use.")

Additionally, as new clinics open, a thorough assessment will be made to determine sequencing impact.

The first group of clinics to begin using CareConnect include:

• CPN Brentwood
• Internal Medicine Consultants of Santa Monica
• Radiation Oncology

The rollout sequencing is critically dependent on technical readiness. Clinics will need to have all the appropriate equipment at least eight weeks before their go-live dates. Build-out checkpoints are scheduled in the rollout plan to ensure that construction, networking, and end-user devices do not affect the go-live date. If a clinic is not technically ready by the checkpoint date, the CareConnect leadership team, together with clinic leadership, will develop a mitigation plan, which may mean a clinic's go-live is delayed. (Click here to see the CareConnect Ambulatory Technology Requirements document.)

"Workflows will be challenging during the 15 months of this transition," said Jeanne Markland, director, ambulatory clinicals build. "At the end, we'll have one system that will make it easier to continue providing the best possible care for our patients."

See the CareConnect ambulatory clinic sequencing schedule here.

Questions or comments? Send us a message through the Contact Us page on our website or send us an email at CareConnect@mednet.ucla.edu.