Partners eCare

“Our objective is to support the highest quality, safest, and most efficient clinical care for our patients. In the process, our systems integration and standardization will provide more and better information for not only patient care, but for research, teaching and for supporting the work we do to keep our communities healthy and thriving.”

–- O’Neil Britton, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President, Massachusetts General Hospital

 About Partners eCare

Through its strategic initiatives, Partners HealthCare is redesigning care delivery to improve the health of our patients while reducing the cost of care.  Achieving these goals requires a level of coordination and standardization across Partners that cannot be supported by disparate information systems.  The Partners eCare implementation and support organization is responsible for the design, development, implementation, and maintenance of Partners’ new clinical and administrative system.  

In July 2012, Partners HealthCare announced it would partner with Epic, the industry-leading provider of health information technology, to implement an integrated, electronic health record at all hospitals, specialty sites, acute care facilities, and physician practices across the Partners network by 2017. This initiative, Partners eCare, is the largest program of its kind in the history of Partners HealthCare.

The Partners eCare guiding principle is “one patient, one record, one team, one Partners statement” enabling a seamless flow of clinical and administrative information about a patient anywhere within the Partners system. The goal is to improve coordination, reduce duplication of care, avoid unnecessary tests, and support our nation’s urgent healthcare quality and cost imperatives.  This new, unifying system will position us to meet the challenges of a shifting health care landscape for years to come.

What it means to patients:

• Online services and tools will enable our patients to manage their own health in the way they value, centered on their needs. 
• Shared knowledge across Partners will provide our researchers with vast opportunities to analyze, study and discover.
• Consistent data will enable more coordinated care for individuals and populations contributing to enhanced healthcare affordability.
• Integrating clinical and administrative data will allow us to measure, benchmark, identify, and improve a wide range of clinical approaches to care.

All members of the care team now have the information to diagnose and treat patients quickly and safely based on a complete health picture, and to coordinate care more efficiently among different locations and practices.  By continuing to increase the continuity of the Partners network, Partners eCare is helping Partners fulfill its pledge to deliver patients high-quality care that is affordable, accessible, safe and effective. 

Attributes of Partners eCare candidates

• Operational experience. Understand clinical workflow in their department and have the ability to understand and conceive new and different ways of doing work as well. Can apply both to design best practices that effectively use software.
• Independent. Can stay on task and manage their efforts to the project plan.
• Flexible and can thrive in the ebb and flow of the project.  Priorities and resources will be shifted as needed. Schedule will be variable, particularly pre and post live. 
• Someone looking for a change, a new challenge, or an opportunity to gain extremely marketable certifications and experience.