Our health organizations have already achieved a number of important CST project milestones this year. We’ve grown the number of CST Cerner users by 25 per cent, to more than 28,000, and loaded over 3.25M patient records to date.

We want to celebrate our recent collective achievements, including: the major rollout at BC Children’s Hospital and BC Women’s Hospital + Health Centre in February, bringing up two more VCH Urgent Primary Care Clinics (UPCCs) and the activation at Sechelt sites.

We have a significant and growing number of CST Cerner users. There is important work ahead ─ both in rolling out CST Cerner to the remaining sites and putting in place a fit-for-purpose program for live sites ─ so we can continue to grow and build upon this digital platform together.

The expertise and contributions of the existing CST team are critical to both and we are tasked with creating a cohesive model and transition plan for how we evolve to support both project work and sustainment.

Therefore, we are supplementing our existing governance structures, which focus on CST project rollouts, to accommodate strategy development, decision making and capacity building for sustainment. Two new sustainment-focused governance groups – the Digital Operations Committee (DOC) and the Clinical Steering Executive Committee (CSEC) – have been formally endorsed by our CEOs and are now operational.

These are designed for CST Cerner as well as other related systems and programs of this nature. In partnership across the three health organizations, we have hired a governance coordinator and will soon have a project manager to support sustainment work.

New committees and areas of responsibility related to CST Cerner:

1. Digital Operations Committee (DOC)

  • This Committee has overall accountability for sustainment of our new digital platform in the same way that CST project board has overall accountability for the delivery of the CST project.
  • This group, which includes the three CEOs and clinically-focused Clinical Steering Executive Committee and Clinical Steering Committee Chairs (see below) from Vancouver Coastal Health, Provincial Health Services Authority and Providence Health Care, and executive leadership representing the CST project and IMITS, is accountable to:
    • Oversee the strategy and provide direction for current and future sustainment initiatives;
    • Prioritize and allocate key resources for sustainment initiatives;
    • Endorse sustainment scope, schedule, and budget;
    • Ensure compliance and monitoring mechanisms are in place to monitor and verify; adherence to scope, schedule, and budget; and
    • Ensure sustainment initiatives achieve the intended clinical and other benefits.

2. Clinical Steering Executive Committee (CSEC)

  • This Committee provides strategic and tactical clinical leadership and direction for sustainment of CST Cerner, ensuring decisions reflect the strategic direction provided by the DOC.
  • This group is a subset of the larger Clinical Steering Committee (CSC) is an existing governance group that provides strategic and tactical clinical leadership and direction for the CST project.
  • The CSES will provide strategic oversight to CSC, ensuring a successful transition between project and sustainment, and CSEC is accountable to:
    • Create and champion the vision for sustainment within the three health organizations;
    • Deliver a shared sustainment model that is collaborative, equitable, and transparent, and that allows for the ongoing optimization of CST Cerner;
    • Set priorities for clinical sustainment through: identification of cross- health organization/ health organization-specific clinical and operational priorities;
    • Empower health organization staff to improve care delivery, innovate and transform;
  • Recommend roles and resources required to support sustainment work to the DOC. Both CSEC and CSC have a rotating tri-chair model led by:
    • Lorraine Blackburn, VP Professional Practice & Chief Clinical Information Officer, VCH
    • Natasha Prodan-Bhalla, VP Quality, Safety, Clinical Informatics, and Chief of Nursing and Allied Practice, PHSA
    • Grant McCullough, Executive Director Professional Practice, Nursing & Clinical Informatics, PHC

Governance Structure: CST Project and CST Cerner Sustainment

Governance Structure chart

Thank you

Our shared platform and partnership, across Vancouver Coastal Health, Provincial Health Services Authority and Providence Health Care, makes us better and benefits our patients.

We want to acknowledge the incredible progress that has been made by all involved in the CST project to date, with more planned for 2022 including: a CST Cerner upgrade, rollout to remaining PHC clinics, and the major implementation at Vancouver General Hospital this fall.

Thank you for going the extra mile as we continue to rollout this essential project to improve the safety, quality and consistency of patient care in B.C.

For more information

Please stay tuned for more updates related to sustainment. In the meantime, please direct any questions to Leila Martin, Governance Coordinator for CST Cerner Sustainment (VCH, PHSA and PHC), via leila.martin@vch.ca

People-Forward