Information Systems

Epic Clarity

Patient Flow

Epic Clarity

What Is It

Clarity is Epic's analytical reporting database, which allows users to perform analysis on the data found in the EpicCare Ambulatory Electronic Medical Record, including demographics, visit details, diagnoses, procedures, medical history, allergies, immunizations, medications, lab results, scheduling, registration, and billing.

Patient Flow

The UPHS Patient Flow system, NaviCare, is utilized throughout the health system. Every day, hundreds of data elements are collected per patient regarding scheduled appointments, transfers, transports, discharges and a multitude of other patient flow related elements.  It is regarded as the nerve center for Penn Medicine ensuring that patients and processes are flowing properly and efficiently each minute.

This complex system is run through four facility-wide application installations of NaviCare:  HUP, PMC, PAH, and PCAM.  The production database architecture is identical among the 4 entities; however, the configuration of each system varies – especially at PCAM, where it is an entirely different patient flow and design. Even among the 3 hospitals, there are differences in patient flow and work flow which leads to differences in the data elements that are captured.

Each of the four facilities has a database behind the application to store real-time data. Each of the facilities has an overnight process in place to replicate the data to a separate database used for reporting.  The target audience for reporting includes The Admissions Center (TAC), Environmental Services (EVS), Transport, Operational Improvement, and Executive & Administrative staff.  Reports generated from the database cover a wide range of topics such as: Admissions,  Bed Requests, Average Discharge Times, Discharge Order Written Time, Pre-Admission Testing flow and times, Environmental Services room clean requests, Room clean turn-around times and delays, Isolation cleans, Transport requests, Transport shifts, completed trips, and delays,  and many other unit and staff specific metrics. The reports are accessed through the Patient Flow Reporting system which is setup separately for each of the hospitals.  The Data Access Center currently supports the HUP reporting system and reports.