Y2 EPIC

Remember back in 1999 as New Years approached, the start of a new year and millennium? I sure do. Remember the huge Y2K scare? People were stocking up on canned goods, water, survival equipment, guns, MREs, gasoline and all manner of other items which seemed so vitally precious to a comfortable life. Convinced the entire global computer network would crash as soon as the date changed over from 1999 to 2000, people were frantic. Anticipation was high, along with anxieties, and some were predicting the beginning of a third World War while others predicted God would dramatically and finally enter history in some climactic apocalyptic event.

But then, after the midnight bell tolled, after the ball in Time Square filled with thousands of lights dropped, after toasts were made and champagne bottles uncorked, after all the whoopla, storage shelter building and fear mongering...life went on as normal.

At Providence Hospital in Anchorage, we have recently been undergoing a huge change as the computer system has been switched from McKesson to a newer and supposedly better system known as EPIC. This is a process that has been in the works for at least 18 months. Millions of dollars and countless extra work hours have been committed to this change so that a new computer charting program can be introduced. The idea is that EPIC will consolidate the three separate programs the hospital previously used, and it will ensure better more efficient patient care.

I started at Providence about one month before the "EPIC go live" date, which was last Saturday, Feb. 26th. And I noticed that during the weeks and days approaching the go live date, the atmosphere around the hospital was so very much like 1999's Y2K scare. Tensions were high, anxieties through the roof, and some people were predicting the whole system would crash, paralyzing the hospital's ability to function while others threatened just to leave and get a job somewhere else rather than suffer such a change.

To make this transition happen, EPIC and Dell have flown in hundreds of tech support people to rove the floors offering aid for charting. A command center full of phones computers and experts was set up in the large conference room next to the cafeteria.

But when the bell tolled at midnight Feb. 26th and the new computer system became self-aware (wait, this isn't Skynet from Terminator!), active, nothing blew up or crashed. Life went on.

Now, that's not to say that there haven't been some problems, because there sure has. A colleague of mine tried to print a patient census list and the printer began spitting out hundreds of papers with gibberish on them. She claimed she's made the printer speak in tongues like some of the people in the book of Acts. Later, the printer wouldn't print anything, and I joked that it had been struck with silence, like another character in Acts.

Many of the RNs and MDs and other have been quite stressed out during this computer system overhaul, and I don't want to down play that. However, I have this feeling that in a few more weeks we will be acclimated, and just like 11 years ago New Years Eve...life will go on as normal.