July 17, 2025
Part of our 25th anniversary blog series celebrating 25 years of member-led transformation in community care
As we mark a quarter century of progress with our national member network and partners, we are thrilled to highlight our members’ inspiring stories. Together, they have achieved operational and financial wellness, supported clinician well-being, and enhanced clinical quality through OCHIN’s integrated knowledge solutions, fueled by the insights and imagination of our national member network.
We invite you to join us in recognizing their collective impact, extraordinary leadership, and groundbreaking efforts to transform the health and well-being of their patients, providers, and communities.
Adapt Integrated Health Care in Southern Oregon recognized that supporting their clinicians meant delivering exceptional training. As a member of the OCHIN network since 2021, they leveraged OCHIN data to analyze their OCHIN Epic training program and identify areas where primary care and behavioral health providers faced challenges.
Instead of employing a one-size-fits-all solution, they introduced personalized, at-the-elbow support that enhanced workflows, improved efficiency and reduced stress associated with time spent charting after hours. As a result, providers are more confident, focused, and better able to care for patients while also prioritizing their own well-being.
Tim Edwards, chief information officer at Adapt Integrated Health Care, shared insights on how they implemented this tailored support to improve organizational efficiency, ultimately leading to better patient care and improved clinician wellness.
How did you select the focus of your program to enhance clinician health and well-being, and why was transformation in this area so important?
One of the issues everyone hears about in health care is provider burnout. We initiated this project after learning that several of our providers were at risk. It is very difficult to replace providers, and we don’t have many new providers entering the system. Our goal was to make these providers feel comfortable, ease their workloads, and shorten the hours they have to work to save them from burnout and help preserve our workforce.
Electronic health record (EHR) systems are not going away, and they’re only going to become more prevalent in the job of a health care provider. That’s why it was important for us to adapt the technology in a way that works best for them.
EHR systems are supposed to be tools to help providers deliver patient care, but sometimes we lose sight of that. We needed to ensure we kept this front and center and helped providers understand how these tools could support them in ultimately providing the best patient care. And if the tools weren’t doing that, we needed to change our approach.
What OCHIN network resources did you use to support your initiative and why?
We initially surveyed our physicians and realized there was a huge divide between those who were embracing and efficiently using OCHIN Epic and those who seemed to be facing challenges with it. This data was anonymous, so we didn’t know who these providers were, but we had Signal data from OCHIN to help identify those who were struggling.
We focused on the lowest-performing providers in Signal based on efficiency, proficiency, and increased after-hours charting workload, known as “pajama time.” Our team created a custom curriculum for these providers, conducted small group training, and provided at-the-elbow support to help with personalization labs to set up OCHIN Epic the way they needed.
However, we faced a challenge: these providers were disengaged, so we had to find a way to get them to participate in the training. We were able to weave this new training into a performance improvement plan, compelling them to attend.
Once the providers joined the training, it was eye-opening for them. Suddenly, OCHIN Epic wasn’t the big monster that they feared; they were able to personalize it and make it work for them.
What were the outcomes of your program, and how did they support providers in optimizing patient care?
We saw a significant shift in perception. We no longer had providers fighting the system and becoming completely disengaged. We were able to help those providers avoid burnout or leaving the organization, or even the profession altogether, and we think that’s a huge win.
We moved the needle there and beyond, so our next step is to continue providing resources to our providers to further improve performance and empower them to make changes and prioritize projects that would be most beneficial to them.
As an integrated health care system, we also created governance committees for our main constituencies: primary care, behavioral health and substance use disorder, and mental health and psychiatry. We partnered with OCHIN to help select one or two providers in each group to participate in the provider builder training and become certified. Now, these three committees own the usability of the EHR and the workflows.
And that, I think, is probably the most impactful piece we have seen as part of this whole evolution—giving ownership of the EHR back to our providers to help them deliver the best patient care.
How will you build on this progress? Where are you headed next?
This project was a huge culture shift for Adapt Integrated Health Care. In the 50-plus years we’ve been around, we haven’t previously empowered our providers in this way. Our team has done an excellent job collaborating and breaking down obstacles to provide this great service, benefiting our organization and saving this population of our providers that we almost lost.
Our providers and our clinicians need to feel seen. They need to feel heard, and we need to empower them and support them in all the things they do for all of us every day.
OCHIN has been a great partner in making sure we have what we need to be successful, and we’re always looking forward as well. We thank them for recognizing the work we’re doing, and we hope to continue providing more information to our providers as we make progress on our journey.
Visit OCHIN’s website to explore more member stories and learn about the transformative impact of the OCHIN network over the past 25 years.
