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While many team members across UVA Health are patient-facing or otherwise highly visible in their everyday tasks, there is one team that thrives mostly out of view, without fanfare. The Health Information and Technology (HIT) team ensures the technology you use every day works seamlessly. When you access the internet, Epic, MyChart, Webex, Microsoft 365, and other programs, you probably don't think about what it takes to make them just work. That's what the HIT team does best — makes things work, so you don't have to think about them.

“They do a lot of behind-the-scenes work no one ever sees that is critical to keeping things running smoothly,” describes Mike Navetta, Administrator, HIT Applications. “A lot of our work is keeping the lights on and regulatory work. The inventory systems, for example, you may use every day and take for granted, but there is someone who is working long hours to make sure those are working correctly. HIT is here to help patients and providers and make their lives easier.” 

And if you do hit the inevitable roadblock, that's OK because HIT has a team for that, too. If you need technical support or have a question, the Help Desk troubleshoots and solves problems. 

“Our help desk team gets tremendous satisfaction from helping people, especially co-workers in patient-facing roles,” says Kate Bakich, Administrator, HIT Service Management. “We track your survey feedback carefully, because we know we’re helping patients if we get problems resolved and clinicians back to their patients as quickly as possible.”

Between keeping everything running during the COVID-19 pandemic and then welcoming three new hospitals and dozens of clinics to UVA Health, HIT is busy. By the time their work is done with the new hospitals and clinics, Bakich’s training team will have trained more than 4,000 Community Health team members and contractors on IT system functionality.

“Our teams touch every part of the organization,” says Navetta. “I like to think of HIT as an enabler of operations. We aren’t in there caring for patients, but we are helping those who are in there doing that, and that’s really critical.” 

COVID and the UVA Community Health Integration required much time and effort from the team, but their other work didn’t stop. “It’s been tough,” says Navetta. “Across every industry and every aspect of life, coming out of COVID has been a challenge, but we’re still at it. I want to make sure the team is recognized for the hard work they’re doing.”  

Here are some of the other recent, major accomplishments of HIT teams in support of their colleagues:

• One Team | United on Access | This project aims to improve Ambulatory patient access while also making UVA Health the best place for team members to provide care. HIT teams are integral to the success of this massive, complex project. They work with providers to help build new scheduling templates, create decision trees in Epic that guide Access associates to the right provider(s) to help patients, support vital team member training, and construct metrics dashboards to measure the impact of these changes.

• UVA Orthopedic Center Ivy Road | The opening of this location involved work from most teams in the HIT department: They deployed new hardware; extended Epic, Peoplesoft, and other systems to this space; and trained new staff.

• Enhanced Epic training for new nurses | Project Nightingale introduced improved test-out options, engaging computer-based learning, and scenario-based instructor-led training. These efforts decreased training completion time and improved onboarding experiences and outcomes for new nurse hires.

• MyChart improvements | Recently, the Infrastructure and Application teams came together to launch Happy Together MyChart, which gives patients the ability to link multiple MyChart accounts together. “You can log in once and toggle back and forth between accounts,” says Navetta. “That is a nice feature for patients and something we had a lot of requests for.”
  
• eHealth Initiative | HIT worked with Operations to get medical records to clinics more efficiently, helping patients and providers. Records are documented, scanned, collated, and added to the patient’s electronic medical record (EMR) before the patient arrives for an appointment. 
  
• Inventory moves | The PeopleSoft team moved inventory storage to the new 29 North warehouse site.

• Epic upgrades | Epic generally is upgraded to the newest version twice a year, and recently, the project included bringing UVA Health’s documentation into compliance with the 21st Century Cures Act. “Because so many people rely upon the EMR, Epic Upgrades are among the biggest projects we run in HIT,” says Bakich. “Our goal is to introduce new Epic functionality that simplifies and improves our clinical care processes while ensuring upgrades don’t cause disruption to our care operations.”

• Information security | “Information security is another thing that goes unnoticed until there’s an issue,” explains Navetta. “Hospitals are a prime target for cyberattacks all over the country. We have an entire cybersecurity team and a lot of processes in place to prevent that. That’s a big body of work that doesn’t always get recognized.”

HIT is looking forward to upcoming projects and planning work into 2024. Some focus areas in the next few months include Digital Front Door initiatives (collection of projects to make it easier for patients and providers to interact virtually), Monticello Surgery Center Epic go-live, Culpeper Hospital Epic go-live, and an Epic upgrade.

So when your technology systems work seamlessly, remember all the HIT team members who made that possible. And if you receive a survey after an interaction with a HIT team member, please take a few moments to share your experience to give them some much deserved credit.