The eight-member Olympic Medical Center Epic Reports Team recently received recognition at a virtual board of commissioners meeting, acknowledging the team’s extensive work measuring and improving reporting drawn from the organization’s electronic health record system.

The recognized team works diligently to create simplified, standardized intake processes for hospital departments needing to request data or a report through Epic, the system OMC uses to manage electronic health records, OMC officials said last week.

Chief Medical Officer Scott Kennedy honored the team that includes Mary Doran, Anna Hansen, Michelle McCullough, Tabatha Owen, Debbie Maden, Lauren McElwain, William Souza and Alberta Stamp.

The cross-department team consists of employees in key areas, including clinical informatics, applications, quality and finance.

“Thanks to (the Epic Reports Team’s) continuous efforts, organization, and detailed work, OMC has a stream of reliable data to support operations and to measure our success in these vital areas,” Kennedy said.

Thanks to the team, needed reports are more swiftly pulled and put in the hands of leaders making decisions in the areas of quality, safety and patient experience, to name a few, OMC representatives said.

“The team made a once complex process more simplified,” Kennedy said.

In one instance, the team created a weekly process in Epic to pull and analyze data on the documentation completed during blood transfusions. The process previously took multiple nursing staff hours of manual auditing to generate a reliable report.

Thanks to the Epic Reports Team, the process is now automatic, saving hours for front-line staff, OMC officials said.

The team also created a custom report to track when clinics are in contact with patients before they’re admitted for surgery, the type of information that allows the surgery team to coordinate pre-operative communication.

In addition to the team’s contributions, Hansen completed additional Epic training that allowed OMC to develop more detailed date and reports from raw Epic data.

“This Epic Reports Team has done, and continues to do, incredible work to move OMC’s electronic health report capabilities forward,” Kennedy said.