What You Should Know:
– Despite pressure to take an Epic-first approach to software decisions, many pharmacies at Epic organizations have held on to third-party products due to the relative immaturity of some of Epic’s more recently developed pharmacy solutions.
– Latest KLAS report explores medication inventory management (MIM) and IV workflow management—the two areas where Epic has focused much of their development efforts—to validate what capabilities these modules deliver and where gaps still exist.
Despite pressure to take an Epic-first approach to software decisions, many pharmacies at Epic organizations have held on to third-party products due to the relative immaturity of some of Epic’s more recently developed pharmacy solutions, according to the latest KLAS report. Recently, Epic has put a significant focus on broad pharmacy development (the only enterprise EMR vendor to have done so), and customers want to know—is it time to switch?
To answer this question, the latest KLAS report, Epic Pharmacy Solutions 2020 explores medication inventory management (MIM) and IV workflow management—the two areas where Epic has focused much of their development efforts—to validate what capabilities these modules deliver and where gaps still exist.
What Progress Has Epic Made with Medication Inventory and IV Workflow Management
Customers agree that Epic does well at helping with initial implementations and continuing to develop needed interfaces. Once live, customers are highly reliant on their own internal Willow analyst teams to customize workflows and deliver reporting to drive optimization. As a result, pharmacy managers and directors can feel they lack a direct Epic connection and the ongoing vendor guidance and expertise that many third-party pharmacy vendors typically provide.
Other key findings of the report include:
– Willow tracks in-Scope medications well, but gaps remain with reporting.
– Completeness of data from solutions outside the Epic ecosystem varies, requiring significant IT investment from customers, who would like both Epic and the hardware vendors to partner better around interfaces.
– IV dispense prep meets core needs for customers, but additional gaps include Epic’s lack of deep expertise in clean-room safety and lack of hardware (which precludes customers from being able to completely consolidate vendors).
– Epic pharmacy functionality delivers breadth but not depth.
For more information about the report, visit https://klasresearch.com/report/epic-pharmacy-solutions-2020/1703
