As of the end of September, the School of Medicine has officially retired the use of SiteMinder and migrated to OnCore Enterprise clinical trials management system.
Approximately 274 protocols and their associated patient records have been migrated to OnCore from SiteMinder in three waves, with the Department of Medicine taking the lead in Wave 1. More than 270 individual users have been trained by the Clinical Research Support Program (CRSP), who have been working closely with the OnCore team to provide OnCore training.
The OnCore team draws on the expertise of staff from HSIS, the CTAO and the CCTS. Every SOM department contributed to the working groups, which have focused on budgeting, financials, protocols, reporting and administration, and subject management.
OnCore sends protocol and patient information to the electronic health record (Cerner’s IMPACT) through PowerTrials. When a new patient is registered to a clinical trial in OnCore, their medical record in IMPACT is associated with the protocol, and an indicator that the patient is on a study is displayed in the banner bar of their chart. Clicking through this hyperlink allows clinicians to view study information and relevant contact information for the principal investigator and study coordinator for the trial in the “Research Summary.”
Research Summaries contain key information that is useful at the point of care and for clinical care providers who are treating patients enrolled in clinical trials. More than 470 protocols and their associated patients have been sent from OnCore to Cerner, and order sets (aka PowerPlans) to support study implementation are continually being built.
Version 15, an OnCore upgrade, is coming early next year and will bring new features and functionality, particularly in the financials area. The OnCore financials project—supported by a working group comprising OnCore Team members; CRSP trainers; representatives of Clinical Billing Review, Patient Financial Services (PFS), the Management Services Organization (MSO), and the Controller’s Office; and financial practitioners representing nine departments – will define the following:
Development of OnCore financials workflows for budgeting, event tracking, and invoicing
Identification and introduction of best practices for budgeting and invoicing
Development of OnCore budget templates
Development of the universal OnCore chargemaster to simplify pricing and the lookup of procedures for budgeting
Streamlining of research billing workflows, including revision of the clinical trials billing notice (CTBN) codes and processes
Development of new training materials to support the use of OnCore financials functionality
If you have any questions or suggestions, contact CCTS (ccts@uab.edu) and/or John Sandefur (jsandefur@uabmc.edu).