What is an Epic Direct Integration?

Medbridge is designed to integrate seamlessly with Epic’s Connection Hub, simplifying workflows for providers at the point of care while also improving the patient experience and your organization’s bottom line.

Benefits

Maximize time savings and organizational profitability by:

• Saving time per patient while increasing patient engagement. For example, HEP integration users frequently save up to 5 minutes per patient while increasing patient engagement. That equals a time savings of 250 hours per year and potential additional revenue of $33,000 per clinician per year for new evaluations and $30,000 per clinician per year for patient visits.^{1, 2, 3}
• Reducing errors in patient care by eliminating manual entry and duplication of records.
• Simplifying implementation for your Epic team with our three-step process.

Streamline clinician workflows by allowing clinicians to:

• Create high-quality digital care and exercise programs from within Epic without going to an outside application.
• Reduce redundant data creation by instantly creating patient records within Medbridge.
• Simplify patient program sharing with our electronic sharing options and easy patient program access.
• Patients who receive their program electronically frequently have a higher engagement rate than through non-electronic methods. For example, HEP patients who receive their program electronically have an engagement rate higher than 80 percent.⁴

Optimize the patient experience by:

• Integrating patient education and home exercises into the EMR for easier access to care programs, leading to improved adherence and outcomes.
• Improving patient rapport by reducing administrative burden and freeing up more time with patients.
• Quickly and easily identifying low adherence and remediating with two-way communication and targeted patient education.

Key Features

• Single Sign-On
• Automatic HEP documentation (Pathways coming soon)
• Instant patient record creation

Considerations

• Epic Hyperdrive is required.
• Clients in Citrix environments may not be able to play videos due to constraints of the environment.

Implementation Process

• Kickoff call to discuss requirements and process details.
• SMART App Registration through Connection Hub. 
• Build decision points reached for integrated solution.
• Client Web FDI Record and E2U/E2N configuration completed. 
• Test users configured for end-to-end testing and testing completed in Medbridge staging.
• Admin, superuser, and clinician training completed.
• Full Client roster updated in Medbridge with EMR’s unique identifier for each user.
• Client and Medbridge builds pushed to production for go-live.
• Integration is enabled and final validations completed.

Epic Direct Integration Flow

1. LAUNCH MEDBRIDGE FROM EPIC ENCOUNTER RECORD USING SINGLE SIGN-ON (SSO) FROM WITHIN EPIC 
   After the clinician locates the Medbridge button within the encounter record, this facilitates the SSO process with Medbridge, taking the clinician to the patient profile or the HEP Builder (HEP) or patient record (Pathways).
2. VIEW PATIENT PROFILE IN MEDBRIDGE
   • HEP: If the patient has a prior record in Medbridge, the clinician lands on the patient profile where they can review adherence data and previous home exercise programs (HEPs) or create a new HEP for the patient. If the patient does not have a previous record, the clinician lands on the Medbridge HEP Builder (see step 3 below). Information passed from the EMR will include patient's MRN, first name, last name, preferred name, date of birth, email, and phone number.
   • Pathways: If the patient has a pathway previously assigned, the clinician will land on the patient record within the pathway and can review or modify from there. If the patient does not have a pathway already assigned, the clinician will land on an empty patient record and can assign a new pathway to the patient. Information passed from the EMR will include patient's MRN, first name, last name, preferred name, date of birth, email, and phone number.
3. REVIEW PROGRESS AND MAKE UPDATES IN MEDBRIDGE
   • HEP: The clinician can create, customize, or update the HEP in Medbridge by adding individual exercises and education for the patient and can then share the program with the patient. We suggest using text or email. When programs are shared digitally with patients, patients are nine times more likely to log in than when they receive access instructions on paper.⁵ Patients can access a PDF via a web login.
   • Pathways: The clinician can review the patient's progress within their assigned pathway and make changes as needed. Clinicians can swap existing exercises for alternates, advance the patient to the next phase of their pathway, or even pause an assigned pathway based on the feedback from their patient. Updates to the pathway are automatically reflected within the Pathways Patient Experience, so the patient is kept up to date without any need for additional communication.
4. SAVE HEP BACK TO EPIC (HEP ONLY)
   • When the clinician saves an HEP in Medbridge, it will automatically be sent to the patient's chart as a note type of your choosing. 

References

1. Overall time savings: Assuming 50 5-day weeks per year and 12 patient visits per day.

2. Cost savings on new evaluations: Assuming 45 minutes per new evaluation, 333 new patient evaluations per year, and a reimbursement of $100/visit.

3. Cost savings on patient visits: Assuming an average of 30 minutes per visit and 500 visits per year.

4. In a sample of Medbridge RTM patients, those who received an electronically shared program in the previous 12 months had an engagement rate of over 80 percent.

5. Based on Medbridge internal research.