Moving Forward with Epic

To the Johns Hopkins Hospital community

Dear Colleagues:

On July 4, I felt a sense of empathy with those rocket scientists at NASA. Over the past five years, they guided their highly sophisticated spacecraft, Juno, on a 1.79 million-mile journey to Jupiter, making multiple, minute adjustments to successfully complete its mission. Finally, on Independence Day, they put Juno into orbit around Jupiter. Only three days earlier, we finallysucceeded in getting Epic, our new and sophisticated electronic medical record system, up and running.

This has been quite a journey for everyone at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Now that we've reached our goal of successfully launching Epic, I want to again convey my congratulations to all of you on the magnificent job you have done and are doing to ensure that it fulfills its mission to vastly improve the superb care we provide to our patients and the efficiency with which we perform it.

Your professionalism, dedication and determination already have overcome the challenges of this enormous task—and will be essential for continuing to do so.

I know that we are all still learning how to use this system. (I know firsthand, as I remain a practicing physician here.) As we do this, keep in mind a few points that we want to emphasize while explaining and using Epic. 

Epic doesn't change who is at the center of what we do: our patients. Indeed, it will integrate care across all of our Johns Hopkins Medicine providers, improving communications with patients and among ourselves. Please take a look at this list of best practices for introducing our patients to Epic and how to communicate with them about our new electronic medical record. Feel free to share these tips with your teams or bookmark the website for ongoing reference.

In the past few years, the British poster from World War II, "Keep Calm and Carry On," has become popular again. In many ways, I think it embodies what is so special about all of you who work at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and throughout Johns Hopkins Medicine. As we solve any challenges with Epic, I know that you will keep calm and carry on—splendidly, as you always do.

Sincerely,

Redonda G. Miller, M.D., M.B.A.
President, The Johns Hopkins Hospital