PROJECT SCOPE OVERVIEW

• Client corporate headquarters: Cincinnati, OH
• Facilities: 1,200 care sites and 49 hospitals
• Number of employees: 60,000+
• Number of patients: 11M annually

RESULTS

• The team migrated 57,600 endpoints from Hyperspace to Hyperdrive
• BSMH has experienced improved response times that are approximately 15% faster than other Epic customers of comparable size.
• Additionally, BSMH’s clinicians and administrative staff report a better overall user experience.

The challenge: Migrating 57,600 devices to Epic Hyperdrive

When Epic retired Hyperspace, its front-end application client, in 2023, the Bon Secours Mercy Health (BSMH) IT team, part of Nordic’s end-to-end managed services organization, began migrating to the application’s next generation version, Hyperdrive. Before the migration, BSMH had a robust infrastructure that included routine reviews of endpoint hardware and network latency and complete enterprise desktop management.

Given the critical importance of Hyperspace to clinical and administrative workflows, a seamless transition to Hyperdrive was essential to ensure BSMH’s 48 hospitals and 60,000+ employees could continue delivering high-quality patient care. BSMH tasked the IT team with delivering and developing multiple solutions simultaneously, provisioning, setting up, and configuring applications, and communicating with testers, partners, and third-party vendors.

The solution: Phased rollout with time for learning

BSMH’s technology infrastructure supports over 67,000 endpoints. The local installation of Hyperdrive was installed on approximately 57,600 devices. The holistic migration strategy included upgrading Epic, pre-work, build and testing, integrated testing, and four rollout waves across BSMH sites. The IT team also established a detailed maintenance process that entails installing updates to the development environment every six weeks for testing and issue resolution.

The information and technology team made these, and other, key decisions to support a successful migration:

• Kept Hyperspace available via Citrix® throughout the migration process to minimize disruptions
• Maintained a slow pace for initial clinical adoption
• Removed desktop shortcuts for Hyperspace early into each rollout phase to combat users’ muscle memory
• Waited until January 2024 to begin rollout waves for larger partner sites, allowing the IT team time to learn the pros and cons of the new deployment
• Set up a rigorous testing lab to vet Hyperdrive’s performance across multiple deployment scenarios and delivery methods

Best practices for successful EHR migrations: Lessons from BSMH

The BSMH Hyperdrive migration provided valuable lessons for advancing health IT modernization efforts. Consider these best practices as your hospital or health system navigates digital transformation:

• Prioritize change management and engage all stakeholders early and often to ensure everyone understands the changes, how they will affect them, and the timelines.
• Engage vendors at the beginning of the project to ensure readiness and address any app upgrade needs.
• Perform a network review before desktop deployment.
• Focus testing on your most prolific, older device models. If the solution performs well on that hardware, the experience should only be better on newer devices.
• Have a proactive plan for addressing project scope creep.
• Plan for additional troubleshooting with end users after go-live.
• Partner with healthcare-focused managed services professionals who can guide your organization through every step of the migration process.