DPH updates commissioners on Epic rollout, digital equity and data strategy
April 19, 2022 | San Francisco City, San Francisco County, California
This article was created by AI summarizing key points discussed. AI makes mistakes, so for full details and context, please refer to the video of the full meeting. Please report any errors so we can fix them. Report an error »
Eric Raffin, DPH chief information officer, and Epic program leads briefed the Health Commission on April 19 about the department's multi-year Epic rollout and a strategic initiative to improve data access and governance.
Jeff Scarthea, the Epic director, said the program is moving from implementation into optimization and projected the department would achieve about 95% of its overall EHR project budget. "If we leave you with one takeaway ... we are projecting 95% on our overall EHR project budget," Scarthea said, and he added that the internal Epic team has a roughly 30% vacancy rate.
Scarthea described recent go-lives (including jail health services and population-health clinics), upcoming waves that include a sobering center and behavioral-health services, and a May rollout of integrated telehealth video visits. He said the department is prioritizing digital equity by simplifying telehealth access (one-click join via text or email) and translating instructions into the city's seven threshold languages.
Albert Yu (chief health information officer) and others addressed clinicians' concerns about data accuracy. Yu described Epic design decisions to require medication-list review before closing an encounter and to provide provider-level dashboards to track review rates, intended to improve problem-list and medication-list completeness over time.
Commissioners asked about schedule and funding through 2024 (Raffin: on schedule and budgeted) and patient access in multiple languages; Scarthea said the portal is currently available in English and Spanish, that informational materials are provided in more languages, and that the department is pressing the vendor to expand patient-facing language support.
DPH also presented a strategic initiative (IDEA) to align, enable and improve data practices across divisions, including building a data-analyst community, a data catalog and improved disease surveillance capability to support policy and programs.
Jeff Scarthea, the Epic director, said the program is moving from implementation into optimization and projected the department would achieve about 95% of its overall EHR project budget. "If we leave you with one takeaway ... we are projecting 95% on our overall EHR project budget," Scarthea said, and he added that the internal Epic team has a roughly 30% vacancy rate.
Scarthea described recent go-lives (including jail health services and population-health clinics), upcoming waves that include a sobering center and behavioral-health services, and a May rollout of integrated telehealth video visits. He said the department is prioritizing digital equity by simplifying telehealth access (one-click join via text or email) and translating instructions into the city's seven threshold languages.
Albert Yu (chief health information officer) and others addressed clinicians' concerns about data accuracy. Yu described Epic design decisions to require medication-list review before closing an encounter and to provide provider-level dashboards to track review rates, intended to improve problem-list and medication-list completeness over time.
Commissioners asked about schedule and funding through 2024 (Raffin: on schedule and budgeted) and patient access in multiple languages; Scarthea said the portal is currently available in English and Spanish, that informational materials are provided in more languages, and that the department is pressing the vendor to expand patient-facing language support.
DPH also presented a strategic initiative (IDEA) to align, enable and improve data practices across divisions, including building a data-analyst community, a data catalog and improved disease surveillance capability to support policy and programs.
View the Full Meeting & All Its Details
This article offers just a summary. Unlock complete video, transcripts, and insights as a Founder Member.
✓
Watch full, unedited meeting videos
✓
Search every word spoken in unlimited transcripts
✓
AI summaries & real-time alerts (all government levels)
✓
Permanent access to expanding government content
30-day money-back guarantee
