Walmart Partners with Epic Systems EHR for Patient Data Access

Walmart Health has announced its plans to adopt the Epic Systems EHR to improve member access to medical records.

The partnership aims to create one collective system for all Walmart Health stakeholders, including patients, payers, and providers. The EHR platform will give members access to a patient portal, improving communication and information sharing between healthcare professionals and patients.

Members can use the patient portal to access their health information, schedule appointments, communicate with providers, and pay their medical bills using a phone or computer.

“Leveraging best in class partners like Epic and their technology platform will assist us in providing a unified health record across care settings, geographies and multiple sources of health data,” Cheryl Pegus, MD, executive vice president of Walmart Health and Wellness, stated in the press release.

“The Epic system complements our omnichannel healthcare offerings – letting customers and healthcare professionals access care and health records to lead to more personalized care.”

Walmart will use the Epic System EHR for all of its health and wellness branches. The company will first implement the EHR platform in four Walmart Health Centers in Florida starting in early 2022, the press release noted.

“Across medical, dental and virtual care, patients will have a unified experience—both within Walmart Health clinics and as they move across the nation’s healthcare ecosystem,” Alan Hutchison, vice president of population health at Epic, said in the press release.

“Providers will have new ways to collaborate with patients, payers, and each other more effectively, so they can work cooperatively to manage a patient’s care journey.”

Walmart’s health centers offer a range of healthcare services including primary care, counseling, health screenings, labs, x-rays, and dental services.

More than 45,000 clinics and 2,000 hospitals, including some of the top-ranked hospitals in the country, use Epic for their EHR. Most of the US population has medical records in an Epic EHR system, the company said.

Epic Systems previously received a positive patient satisfaction rating and a high COVID-19 response rating, a KLAS report showed. With an average overall satisfaction rating of 7.9 and an average COVID-19 response rating of 8.2—both values out of 9—Epic was the second-highest rated EHR vendor in the 2021 KLAS update.

Walmart’s announcement to adopt the Epic EHR system for its health centers follows a number of other healthcare organizations that have done the same in 2021.

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences implemented Epic’s EHR at its nine regional campuses. Southeast Health Medical Group in Alabama and Tower Health in Pennsylvania also launched Epic EHR across their networks in 2021, to name a few.