Carolinas Healthcare System needed a way to communicate more effectively with its ambulatory physicians. It turned to uCern, Cerner’s social business networking platform, to share information and drive ambulatory EMR adoption among its physicians.

uCern offers users the ability to create and comment on discussions, blogs, wikis, video, documents, allowing Cerner associates, clients and business partners to easily collaborate and communicate.

Dr. Greg Weidner, ambulatory medical director for CHS’ EMR Program, created a community on uCern called “My EMR.” Today, now with more than 250 members, assists physicians to become more effective users of the Cerner EMR.

“Our meetings are more productive and focused because we get some things done in real-time using this collaborative tool that has us all engaged,” said Weidner. “The success we had led us to think about expanding the concept beyond the leadership team to our entire user base.”

Members of the My EMR community are notified of replies to discussions or new items in the group via email notifications, saving physicians time to reply without having to log in to uCern.

“uCern is a paradigm shift for supporting collaboration in the workplace and has enormous potential to change the way we all work together,” said Weidner. “We learn something every day about uCern’s possibilities by asking, ‘what if,’ and ‘can we do this.’ Some of the things that are possible only expose themselves when you ask questions and start thinking differently.

For more information on how Carolinas Healthcare is using uCern, download the Carolinas Healthcare case study (.PDF).

“We felt uCern might provide the opportunity to engage our providers by allowing us to share information, provide training materials, solicit feedback and encourage peer-to-peer support and learning.”

Dr. Greg Weidner, Ambulatory Medical Director

Carolinas Healthcare System