EpicCare Work Groups

The EpicCare implementation team will be looking for new volunteers to develop various clinical tools to facilitate patient care and documentation when we all start using EpicCare for our medical record. Some folks from our Department have been working on these for about 6 months, but more help is needed. Much of this work will be creating templates (SmartTexts), which are blocks of text that are used to document a patient visit for a problem or procedure.

It takes a substantial amount of work to create these templates to meet the needs of most clinicians that will use them. There are many templates that will be developed and we anticipate finalizing initial templates by spring 2006. Revisions will be made once a year. As a result, the people that help create these will represent their peers and will be expected to solicit suggestions, comments and feedback from their peers during the development process. If you want to be in on the ground floor as these are being developed, now is the time to volunteer.

Several groups are being created that will need representation. We will have groups working with our specialty colleagues in areas that cross disciplines. We are looking for volunteers to represent Family Medicine on the OB/GYN, Pediatric, Immediate Care and Adult Medicine work groups. As we divide up the work to be done, people with special interest or expertise will be invited to join the work groups in addition to the volunteers. The meetings days and times are not set for all these groups, but expect to meet twice a month for 1-1.5 hours. The adult medicine group will start meeting from 7:00-8:30AM on the second and fourth Mondays initially, but may change based on the needs of the group.

If you have questions or want to volunteer contact:

• Dave Kunstman, MD at David.Kunstman@uwmf.wisc.edu
• Mary Rowe, MD at Mary.Rowe@uwmf.wisc.edu, or
• Paul Smith, MD at Paul.Smith@fammed.wisc.edu