Tag: Epic

In Defense of Epic. No, Really!

Apr 17, 2015• 20

By ROBERT WACHTER, MD

Today THCB is delighted to feature an excerpt from Robert Wachter’s much-talked about new book “The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age“ (McGraw Hill, 2015). If you enjoy this piece, be sure have a look at the director’s cut interviews Wachter did for the book with Atul Gawande: “Computers Replacing Doctors“, and John Halamka: “Black Turtlenecks, Data Fiends & Code.” — John Irvine

That Epic would find itself labeled a monopoly is in itself an extraordinary turn of events. In 2000, after 21 years in business, the company had only 400 employees and 73 clients, and did not appear on a list of the top 20 hospital EHR vendors. Its big break came in 2003, when the 8 million–member Kaiser Permanente system selected Epic over two far better known competitors, IBM and Cerner. The cost to build Kaiser’s electronic health record: $4 billion.

Today, Epic has 8,100 employees, 315 clients, and yearly revenues of approximately $2 billion. The system is now deployed in 9 of the US News & World Report’s “Top 10” hospitals. In 2014, the company estimated that 173 million people (54 percent of the U.S. population) had at least some medical information in an Epic electronic record.

Epic Founder and CEO Judy Faulkner’s vision, built on several central tenets, has been vindicated many times over. The first principle was that the winning EHR vendor would be the one that solved the most problems for its customers.

While Apple’s App Store has made a modular environment seem feasible and even desirable, most healthcare decision makers want a single product that does everything they need right out of the box (physician notes, nursing notes, drug ordering and dispensing, billing, compliance, and population health) and does those things everywhere, from the newborn nursery to the urology clinic to the ICU.

In Search of Intra-Aero-Bili-ty

Apr 12, 2015• 4

By MATTHEW HOLT

Today is the kick-off of the vendor-fest that is HIMSS. Late last week on THCB, ONC director Karen De Salvo and Policy lead Jodi Daniel slammed the EMR vendors for putting up barriers to interoperability. Last year I had my own experience with that topic and I thought it would be timely to write it up. (I’ll also be in the Surescripts booth talking about it at 3.45 Monday)

I want to put this essay in the context of my day job as co-chairman of Health 2.0, where I look at and showcase new technologies in health. We have a three part definition for what we call Health 2.0. First, they must be adaptable technologies in health care, where one technology plugs into another easily using accessible APIs without a lot of rework and data moves between them. Second, we think a lot about the user experience, and over eight years we’ve been seeing tools with better and better user experiences–especially on the phone, iPad, and other screens. Finally, we think about using data to drive decisions and using data from all those devices to change and help us make decisions.

This is the Cal Pacific Medical Center up in San Francisco. The purple arrow on the left points to the door of the emergency entrance.

Cal Pacific is at the end of that big red arrow on the next photo. On that map there’s also a blue line which is my effort to add some social commentary. To the top left of that blue line in San Francisco is where the rich people live, and on the bottom right is where the poor people live. Cal Pacific is right in the middle of the rich side of town, and it’s where San Francisco’s yuppies go to have their babies.

Last year, on August 26, 2014 at about 1 am to be precise, I drove into this entrance rather fast. My wife was next to me and within an hour, we were upstairs and out came Aero. He’s named Aero because his big sister was reading a book about Frankie the Frog who wanted to fly and he was very aerodynamic. So when said, “What should we call your little brother?” She said, “I want to call him Aerodynamic.” We said, “OK, if he comes out fast we’ll call him the aerodynamic flying baby.” So he’s called Aero for short.

Thus began the Quest for Intra-Aero-Bili-ty –a title I hope will grow on you. The Bili part will become obvious in a paragraph or two.

Something had changed since we had been at Cal Pacific three years earlier for the birth of Coco, our first child.

If you look carefully at the top of Amanda’s head, there’s now a computer system. Like most big provider systems, Sutter–Cal Pacific’s parent company–has installed Epic and it’s in every room or on a COW (cart on wheels). Essentially we have spent the last few years putting EMRs in all hospitals. This is the result of the $24+ billion the US taxpayer (well, the Chinese taxpayer to be more accurate) has spent since the 2010 rollout of the HITECH act.Continue reading…

Epic Systems’ Open Platform Will Bring U.S. Health Care Delivery Into the 21st Century

Apr 7, 2015• 11

By STEPHEN M. KRUPA

Epic Systems, the market leader in electronic health record software (EHR), recently made a quiet but potentially transformative announcement that may finally shake the healthcare industry out of its technological doldrums.

Epic said it is prepared to support the creation of a more open interoperability platform for integration with other diversified healthcare applications. This will attract substantial investment to create software that operates, hopefully seamlessly, within the Epic EHR infrastructure. Expect Epic’s competitors to follow suit, eventually opening up the marketplace of installed EHRs to third-party software developers and the efficiencies of modern, post-EHR technology ecosystem.

Epic’s critics have often denounced the company for selling a mostly closed technology, dampening hopes for the creation of an ecosystem of best-of-breed applications that work together with the EHR to automate much of the care delivery infrastructure beyond patient intake and billing. The value of such an infrastructure is extremely compelling and so the company is under enormous pressure from its customers to become more open.

HIT Newser: Big Win for Epic in San Diego

Apr 1, 2015• 5

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

Epic Scores Another Big Win

Scripps Health selects Epic to replace its existing GE Healthcare’s Centricity Enterprise (inpatient) and Allscripts Enterprise (outpatient). The San Diego-based Scripps includes five acute-care campuses, 26 outpatient clinics, and 2,600 affiliated physicians.

No doubt that this is one that Cerner had hoped to win.

Marlin Equity Partners Acquires e-MDs

Marlin Equity Partners acquires ambulatory EMR provider e-MDs. Marlin will merge e-MDs with its existing portfolio company MDeverywhere, a provider of RCM and credentialing services for physicians. e-MD founderContinue reading…

HIT Newser: The Judy Faulkner Foundation or Whatever We’re Calling It

Mar 18, 2015• 2

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

Epic’s Faulkner Shares Charitable Foundation Plans

In an interview with Modern Healthcare, Epic founder/CEO Judith Faulkner reveals that she will leave much of her wealth to a specially created charitable foundation that will operate and fund not-for-profit organizations in healthcare and other areas. The 71-year-old Faulkner says that almost all her shares of Epic stock will go to the foundation upon her death, or sooner if she chooses.

The plan is also designed to keep Epic private. “My stock will go to the foundation,” Faulkner said. “The foundation will control the stock. This plan is designed to preserve the company as a private company forever.”

Faulkner, who has an estimated worth of $2.8 billion, says she never wanted the money personally or for her family and wonders, “What would you want with all that money? It doesn’t seem right and I can’t tell you why.”

What’s not to like about Faulkner’s values or her plan?

HIT Newser: Black Book Rankings Not So Unbiased?

Feb 22, 2015

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

Black Book: Not so Unbiased and Relevant?

Black Book Rankings announces that it will change its EHR survey methods and remove ballots cast by provider organizations that serve as resellers/VARs, and/or channel partners. The organization reviewed previous surveys and discovered that 33 hospital resellers had cast EHR satisfaction and loyalty ballots for 740 physician practices, and that 93% of the physician practices and small hospitals felt obligated to only select the EHR offered by their hospital.

Well, duh! I have always been a little suspect of Black Book’s survey method since their findings are often so different than the rankings from KLAS. If I were a vendor with a website that proudly displayed a high ranking from Black Book, I think I would quietly remove that reference, at least for now.

Epic Opening App Exchange

Epic Systems is launching its own app store, giving outside companies the ability to market applications that work with Epic’s EHR. According to former Nordic Consulting CEO Mark Bakken, the app store will “open the floodgates” for anyone who knows Epic and wants to get their products in front of Epic clients quickly.

Politically it’s a savvy move, since Epic wants to continue dispelling those rumors that its system is closed and lacks the interoperability of some of its competitors vying for the DoD’s $11 billion EHR contract.

Halamka Speaks: athenahealth & the Future of AMCs as Tech Innovators

Feb 9, 2015• 4

By MATTHEW HOLT

It’s always interesting to talk with John Halamka, and last week–after athenahealth bought the IP but apparently not the actual code of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) web-based EHR he’s been shepherding for the past 18 years–I got him on the record for a few minutes. We started on the new deal but given that had already been covered pretty well elsewhere we didn’t really stay there. More fun that way–Matthew Holt

Matthew Holt: The guys across town (Partners) ripped out all the stuff they’ve been building and integrating for the last 30 years and they decided to pay Judy Faulkner over a billion dollars. And you took all the stuff that you’ve been building for the past 15 to 20 years and sold it to Jonathan Bush for money. Does that make you a better businessman than they are?

(Update Note 2/11/15: While I’ve heard from public & private sources that the cost of the Partners project will be between $700m and $1.4 billion, Carl Dvorak at Epic asked me to point out less than 10% of the cost goes to Epic for their fees/license. The rest I assume is external and internal salaries for implementation costs, and of course it’s possible that many of those costs would exist even if Partners kept its previous IT systems).

John Halamka: Well, that is hard to say, but I can tell you that smart people in Boston created all these very early systems back in the 1980s. On one hand, the John Glaser group created a client server front end. I joined Beth Israel Deaconess in 1996 and we created an entirely web-based front end. We have common roots but a different path.

It wasn’t so much that I did this because of a business deal. As I wrote in my blog, there is no benefit to me or to my staff. There are no royalty streams or anything like that. But sure, Beth Israel Deaconess receives a cash payment from Athena. But important to me is that the idea of a cloud-hosted service which is what we’ve been running at Beth Israel Deaconess since the late ’90s hopefully will now spread to more organizations across the country. And what better honor for a Harvard faculty member than to see the work of the team go to more people across the country?

MH: There’s been a lot of debate about the concept of developing for the new world of healthcare using client server technology that has been changed to “sort of” fit the integrated delivery systems over the last 10 years, primarily by Epic but also Cerner and others. In particular how open those systems are and how able they are to migrate to new technology. You’ve obviously seen both sides, you’re obviously been building a different version than that. And a lot of this is obviously about plugging in other tools, other technologies to do things that were never really envisaged back in 1998. You’ve come down pretty strongly on the web-based side of this, but what’s your sense for how likely it is that what has happened over the last five or ten years in most other systems including the one across the street we just mentioned is going to change to something more that looks more like what you had at Beth Israel Deaconess?Continue reading…

Computers Replacing Doctors, Innovation and the Quantified Self: An Interview with Atul Gawande

Feb 5, 2015• 49

By ROBERT WACHTER, MD

Atul Gawande is the preeminent physician-writer of this generation. His new book, Being Mortal, is a runaway bestseller, as have been his three prior books, Complications, Better, and The Checklist Manifesto.

One of the joys of my recent sabbatical in Boston was the opportunity to spend some time with Atul, getting to see what an inspirational leader and superb mentor he is, along with being a warm and menschy human being. In my continued series of interviews I conducted for The Digital Doctor, my forthcoming book on health IT, here are excerpts from my conversation with Atul Gawande on July 28, 2014 in Boston.

I began by asking him about his innovation incubator, Ariadne Labs, and how he decides which issues to focus on.

Gawande: Yeah, I’m in the innovation space, but in a funny way. Our goal is to create the most basic systems required for people to get marked improvements in the results of care. We’re working in surgery, childbirth, and end-of-life care.

The very first place we’ve gone is to non-technology innovations. Such as, what are the 19 critical things that have to happen when the patient comes in an operating room and goes under anesthesia? When the incision is made? Before the incision is made? Before the patient leaves the room? It’s like that early phase of the aviation world, when it was just a basic set of checklists.

In all of the cases, the most fundamental, most valuable, most critical innovations have nothing to do with technology. They have to do with asking some very simple, very basic questions that we never ask. Asking people who are near the end of life what their goals are. Or making sure that clinicians wash their hands.Continue reading…

KLAS Announces 2014 Best in KLAS Winners

Feb 2, 2015• 1

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

Epic regains its top spot in the 2014 Best in KLAS awards, winning in the Overall Physician Practice Vendor and Overall Software Suite categories. Impact Advisors was named the Overall IT Services Firm.

Last year athenahealth beat out Epic by a narrow margin. This year athena still had an excellent showing, taking the top spots for Practice Management in both the 1-10 physician and 11-75 physician categories, as well as second place (after Epic) in the over 75 physician category.

Epic won Best in KLAS or category leader honors for Acute Care EMR, Ambulatory EMR (11-75 physicians and over 75 physicians), HIE, Lab, Patient Account and Patient Management, Patient Portals, Pharmacy, Radiology, and Surgery Management.

HIT Newser: An Epic Loss for Cerner & GE + Google Glass Confusion

Jan 26, 2015• 1

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

An Epic Loss for Cerner and GE

Mayo Clinic announces it will replace its existing Cerner and GE systems with Epic’s EHR and RCM system.

The prestigious Mayo Clinic name and clinical reputation make the win especially sweet for Epic, which is in the running for the DoD’s $11 billion EHR contract. Analysts estimate that Mayo will pay Epic “hundreds of millions” over the next several years.

Google Glass Confusion

Earlier this month Google announced the end of its Glass Explorer program and sales of its existing version of Glass. Many mainstream publications carried “Glass is Dead” headlines, which is certain attention-grabbing, though not entirely true.

Individual consumers had the option to pay $1,500 to purchase Google Glass through the now-defunct Glass Explorer program. Enterprise businesses, such as HIT vendors Augmedix and Pristine, are still able to buy the existing version of Glass through Google’s Glass at Work program. In other words, if you’re interested in using Google Glass in a healthcare setting, that option is still available through a Glass at Work partner.

Meanwhile, Google says it is working future versions of its Glass product – though no one is saying when the next release will be.Continue reading…