About EMPIRIC

Aim and Function

EMPIRIC (Electronic Health Record Modernization Partnership Integrating Rapid Cycle Evaluation to Improve Cerner Implementation) is a QUERI-funded partnered evaluation initiative (PEC 20-168) that is designed to understand and improve clinician and staff experiences during the VA’s EHR Modernization (EHRM) effort. We have engaged several key operational partners and have tailored our evaluation to meet their needs to improve EHRM outcomes.

This quality improvement project is co-led by Multiple Principal Investigators, Dr. Seppo Rinne and Dr. Sarah Cutrona, at VA Bedford Healthcare System and Dr. Michael Matheny at VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System. The EMPIRIC QUERI organization is outlined below, including key partners and projects, which address our primary goal of identifying best practices that can support and improve EHRM during the nationwide rollout.

Organization

The EMPIRIC QUERI is organized to facilitate partnered work through a unified leadership and administrative team and synergistic evaluation efforts. We have established three evaluation partnerships with the following VA offices:

• National EHRM Supplemental Staffing Unit (NESSU)
  • EMPIRIC objective: understand the strengths and areas for improvement for services delivered by NESSU to ensure that NESSU can continue to offer effective and efficient support to frontline clinicians, minimizing delays in clinical care during EHRM
• Office of Clinical Informatics (OCI) - formerly Clinical Informatics and Data Management Office (CIDMO)
  • EMPIRIC objective: establish work that will support EHRM Reset activities and address future EHRM improvement efforts related to user experience and patient safety
• Simulation Learning, Evaluation, Assessment, and Research Network (SimLEARN)
  • EMPIRIC objective: characterize workflow challenges and identify effective strategies that can inform and support SimLEARN’s efforts and improve EHR use

Shared resources

EMPIRIC-partnered initiatives draw on essential shared resources that facilitate collaborative work and avoid data collection redundancies. These resources include:

• Organization: we build on established leadership and project management structures to organize and facilitate project work.
• Knowledge: across partnered projects, our evaluation work draws on established institutional and content knowledge from years of EMPIRIC work.
• Qualitative methods: we coordinate qualitative data collection and analysis, mitigating interview burden and supporting qualitative method synergies.
• Quantitative methods: we coordinate quantitative data collection and analysis using data derived from surveys, administrative sources, workload tracking and Chat platforms as well as EHR log data.
• Reporting and dissemination: we use established mechanisms for drafting reports and presentations and disseminating them through established channels.

Funding for this project is provided by the Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) and our three operational partners: NESSU, OCI, and SimLEARN.

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