By Kristen Godfrey. UC Davis Health launched the Epic Refuel program in February 2019 with an eye toward achieving greater efficiency, usability, and “gold star” status. Epic is the electronic health records system used by all five UC Health organizations. Refuel is a program designed by UC Davis Health Information Technology to help implement Epic’s foundation system.
This system enables the increased adoption of features and modules, reduces the risk of system failure, improves quarterly upgrades, and increases user satisfaction, efficiency, and usability. The Refuel program also aligns with Epic’s Gold Stars program, a roadmap for identifying and adopting the features that will improve clinical, financial, and patient outcomes.
The Gold Stars and Refuel programs resulted in three major benefits at UC Davis Health:
- Allowing patients to access their medical records through MyUCDavisHealth (formerly MyChart) and receiving PDF documents for immediate use and download
- Cleaning up the physician workspace to allow physicians to find key information in less time, and also allowing physicians and nurses to find their commonly used activities through primary activity tabs
- Flagging a baby’s chart to alert clinical staff if the mother has a positive HIV, Hepatitis B, Group B streptococcus, or syphilis test, allowing clinicians to place orders for follow-up actions in the baby’s chart.
Before Refuel, UC Davis Health was at Gold Stars Level 3. In just two quarterly upgrades, UC Davis Health achieved Gold Stars Level 7, above the average, and placing UC Davis Health in the 76th percentile for participating organizations.
At the conclusion of the Refuel program, UC Davis Health is projected to achieve Gold Stars Level 9, bringing it to the 95th percentile for participating organizations!
Kristen Godfrey is communication specialist, Information Technology, UC Davis Health.
Congrats, this was a big effort but those results are amazing