2024 Lightning Talk: Regional Electronic Health Record – Dr Andrea Pollock (in photo), GPO in Medical Oncology at BC Cancer Surrey, BC Cancer Medical Staff Engagement Society CST Liaison

The BC Cancer MSA medical staff CST subcommittee and physician liaison are facilitating effective engagement and communication between physicians, BC Cancer  leadership, and PHSA leadership during implementation of the new Cerner electronic health record system.

CST Subcommittee participants

• Physicians and nurse practitioners who have served as CST champions at both fully implemented and newly initiating sites will facilitate the cross-pollination of ideas and lessons learned.

• BC Cancer leadership department heads, EMD for regional centres, Senior Executive Director for Medical Affairs and Quality, BC Cancer CST Manager, PHSA CST leadership (CMIO), PHSA CST Medical Direction, and Doctors of BC regional representative.

• BC Cancer Medical Staff Association Regional representatives from each centre.

Physician CST Liaison role 

• Chairs the CST subcommittee that meets every one to two months.
   
• Is responsible for being at each site in-person when they “go live” to seek feedback at the various stages of implementation.
   
• Attends CST-related meetings at the site to facilitate two-way communication between the site and health authority.

Impact

• Opportunities to share issues at the beginning of implementation helped to lead key changes in Cerner functionality that wouldn’t have occurred without engagement. 
   
• A collaborative “lessons learned” document was developed and progressed as each site went live, using Vancouver’s documented implementation experience as a starting point.
   
• Collaboration with BC Cancer on a survey helped to collect medical staff input.

Lessons and success factors

• More engagement before the go-live dates so physicians can share what they are worried about with leadership, and physicians who have gone through the process can alleviate some angst.
   
• Communication is critical as well as challenging. When engaged physicians have capacity to attend meetings and read e-mails, they are aware, informed, and able to participate. Effective communication strategies for physicians with little capacity to engage is an ongoing challenge. 

“We also wanted opportunities to talk about the impacts of the new system on workload and physician wellness. The rollout for BC Cancer involved each of the six centers going one at a time, so the other goal was to bring lessons learned from each site forward.” – Dr Andrea Pollock 
 

MORE RESOURCES

• Lightning Talk presentation slides
• MSA EHR Physician Lead Job Description (Template)  
• MSA EHR Physician Lead Job Description (Filled in)
• Lessons Learned: EHR Engagement and Implementation
• BCCA CST Learning Results  
• CST One-year Survey Followup