Why This Study
Go-lives fail at the edges: the clinician who can't capture data the way the application logic expects, the unit where device connectivity quietly breaks down, the setup defect that nobody escalates because nobody knows whose it is. I spent two years as the person those problems landed with — first-line EPIC support, ServiceNow triage, Vocera administration, and training the clinicians and analysts around me. This playbook turns that seat into a repeatable structure any go-live could run.
The Playbook, in Five Parts
1 · Readiness checklist
Before day one: user accounts provisioned (the Vocera lesson — access problems masquerade as training problems), devices purchased and staged, tip-sheet library seeded with the top known issues, and escalation paths printed where people can actually find them.
2 · Floor-support rotations
Support staff scheduled where the work is — rounding on units in shifts, paired so a new analyst shadows an experienced one, with coverage matched to each unit's busiest hours rather than spread evenly and thin.
3 · Issue triage board
Every issue lands on one visible board, sorted the way I triaged the ServiceNow queue: user coaching (fix now, teach now), application issue (workaround plus ticket), setup or data-capture defect (escalate with evidence). One board, three lanes, no lost problems.
4 · Tip-sheet library
Each resolved issue gets converted into a short tip sheet the same day, written for the next analyst and the next clinician — the habit I practiced at MGH, made systematic. The library is the go-live's memory.
5 · Escalation paths
Named paths, not departments: which issues go to application setup, which to network engineering (the Vocera access-point lesson — voice quality is a coverage problem until proven otherwise), which to the vendor, and what evidence each path needs before the handoff.
Running through all five
A daily rhythm: morning review of the triage board, midday floor check-ins, evening summary of counts by lane. The point is trend-spotting — when the same data-capture issue appears five times, it's no longer five tickets, it's one training gap.
Triage Lanes at a Glance
| Lane | What it looks like | Playbook response |
|---|---|---|
| Coach | User unsure how to enter data per application logic | Fix at the elbow, teach the logic, add or update a tip sheet if it repeats |
| Workaround | Application issue with a safe alternate path | Document the workaround, broadcast it to the floor team, log the defect |
| Escalate | Setup, configuration, connectivity, or device defect | Escalate to the named owner — setup team, network engineering, or vendor support — with reproduction details attached |
How Success Would Be Judged
- Time to first response on the floor — clinicians should never wonder whether help exists.
- Repeat-issue rate — the tip-sheet library and coaching lanes exist to drive this down day over day.
- Escalation quality — defects that arrive with evidence get fixed faster; vague tickets bounce.
- Clinician confidence — the honest end metric of any go-live: do the people doing patient care trust the system and the support around it?