FL Health System Taps Epic Systems EHR to Drive Patient Care Access

The Florida-based NCH Healthcare System has announced it will transition away from its Cerner EHR and instead will move forward with an Epic Systems EHR implementation in an effort to drive interoperability while improving patient care access.

Better interoperability leads to better patient care; through this switch, patient data can be accessed by the thousands of hospitals leveraging Epic Systems, the organization said.

For example, large health systems such as Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Cleveland Clinic, all use Epic Systems. Theoretically, NCH providers should be able to seamlessly access the medical records of patients they share with those organizations.

This EHR transition will be extremely beneficial to patients who travel or spend part of the year in other parts of the country and need medical care, NCH stated.

“Epic brings transformational change to our healthcare system,” Paul Hiltz, president, and chief executive officer of NCH, told Naples Daily News. “Our patients will now have access to their records from anywhere. It’s the premier electronic health record system and will improve the patient experience and allow us to continue to provide the best quality care.”

The Epic EHR System, costing just under $65 million, is scheduled to go live on June 4, 2022.

Over the last year, nearly 4,300 NCH employees have been trained on the new Epic Systems EHR, Naples Daily News reported.

The switch for more than 1 million patient records will include patients treated at NCH hospitals and physician offices, diagnostic centers, and outpatient surgery centers.

The EHR implementation also comes with Epic’s patient portal, MyChart. Patients will be able to access their medical records, see lab results, schedule appointments, talk to their care team, and request prescription refills, among other functions.

“Existing patients who have the MyNCH Health Portal will need to set up new electronic access,” NCH spokeswoman Amanda Lucey said.

As of now, over 250 million patients are connected through Epic Systems, making it the largest EHR vendor in the country.

Earlier this year, Marion County Health Department also decided to go through with an Epic EHR implementation making it the first public health organization in West Virginia to adopt this EHR.

Under this new system, all health visits to the department will be entered into an online medical record for that patient.

These latest Epic EHR implementations are just two examples of Epic’s continued success.

In 2021, Epic had the greatest market share growth, dominating its competition once again. The company had 33 percent of the hospital market for EHR, according to the 2021 KLAS market share report. 

As of last year, Epic Systems scored 74 hospitals and over 80,000 beds. The organization remained the top choice for large healthcare organizations, gaining over 32 members.

The EHR system’s stability and deep integration attract large organizations, whose smaller regional partners often follow suit to support improved collaboration and care coordination, KLAS officials stated.