This is an internal newsletter from Wellstar Health System, specifically for OpTime/Anesthesia staff. It covers system updates, workflow changes, and educational resources for perioperative and anesthesia teams.
This is the October 2026 issue of the OpTime/Anesthesia Newsletter from Wellstar Health System. It is an internal publication for perioperative and anesthesia staff, providing updates on system changes, workflow guidance, and educational resources. The newsletter covers temporary pauses in e-Consent and medication reconciliation functions, explains differences between PACU and pain block acuity levels, and introduces new tip sheets for documentation and mobile workflows.
The e-Consent expiration date field has been temporarily removed due to a calculation error in the 30-day expiration feature. Epic is researching the issue, and the field will remain blank until the fix is implemented and tested. This affects all users of the e-Consent form in OpTime/Anesthesia.
Medication reconciliation for outpatient Ambulatory staff has been reverted to a pre-upgrade version due to issues with outside medication updates. The rollback started on October 6, 2026, and the upgraded functionality will be restored after validation. Staff are instructed to continue using the pre-upgrade workflow and to report issues to the Wellstar IT Physician ServiceDesk.
The newsletter clarifies that PACU acuity levels and nerve block acuity levels are different. PACU acuity tracks physiological recovery from anesthesia using the Modified Aldrete Score, while pain block acuity tracks complexity and safety risks of regional nerve blocks or neuraxial infusions. A patient can have low PACU acuity but high pain block acuity, as in the example of a thoracic surgery patient with an epidural.
New tip sheets are featured for October, covering wound classification for intra-op procedures, blood orders for intra-op nurses, postprocedure handoff on mobile for anesthesia, preprocedure details on mobile, and procedure notes on mobile. The newsletter also announces a new Epic Education SharePoint site with a Tip Sheet Finder, and directs staff to the Perioperative Communications Dashboard and Epic Connect site for additional resources.