Now that it has been more than a decade since the initial push to establish EMRs through the federal Meaningful Use program, healthcare organizations are beginning to face something just as monumental, the need to tie technological advances across the enterprise: enterprise resource planning (ERP). It’s a big undertaking, but one that Onyeka Nchege, SVP/CIO with Novant Health in North Carolina, is queuing up to help his organization meet its overall goals. Not only will the ERP system alleviate pain points, but it will be part of the “secret sauce” all organizations need: a good back-office system, combined with a good EMR, he says. It will help the organization better manage day-to-day business activities, including accounting, procurement, project management, risk management, compliance, and supply chain operations.

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Bold Statements

“I think gone are the days where you said, ‘Hey, it’s going to take me a year and a half to implement something,’ right? Those days are long gone, especially when you think about the pandemic and the things that we had to do to react and react very quickly.”

“We aren’t simply taking Novant Health’s current processes and transplanting them into a new technology. It’s not just a lift and shift for us, instead, you know, we’re making an investment that transforms the way our team members perform their work.”

“ … at the end of the day, I aim to ensure that these department leaders understand what our new systems have to offer, and secure their buy-in and input, and create change champions in those spaces.”

 

Guerra: Onyeka, thanks for joining me. Tell me about your organization and your role.

Nchege: I’m happy to do that. Novant Health is an integrated network of physician clinics, outpatient centers, and hospitals that delivers a seamless and convenient healthcare experience through more than 6 million patient visits annually. And our network consists of more than 1,800 physicians and over 35,000 team members that provide care at more than 800 locations that include 15 medical centers, and hundreds of outpatient facilities and physician clinics. Our core markets are in Winston Salem, N.C., where we are headquartered. We also have a significant presence in Charlotte and Wilmington as well.

 

Guerra: You have a big ERP (enterprise resource planning) project going. It’s a big deal. I saw the release about some help you were getting with that project. We’ll talk more about that. People have said that Meaningful Use spurred on the EMR implementations, and that went on for quite a long time, and now it’s time for some other big projects. Do you see that evolution over the last 15 years?

Nchege: So you see the big ERP, EMR implementations that are happening, but I think folks are starting to realize the value of what I’m going to call “time to market” and getting implementations done faster, so that your business can start to realize value sooner rather than later. I think you’re seeing more and more of that out in the marketplace, especially in the healthcare space, related to corporate systems, or back-office systems, from an ERP perspective. And then you’ve also got the patient-facing solutions, like the EMR. So, the combination of both of those together is really the secret sauce from a technology perspective within the healthcare space.