Health Org Taps Epic Community Connect for EHR Interoperability

Woman’s Hospital, a specialty healthcare organization focusing specifically on women’s healthcare, has entered contract negotiations with New Orleans-based LCMC Health to gain access to an EHR implementation through Epic’s Community Connect program for improved interoperability.

Epic System’s Community Connect model is a cost-effective program that allows hospitals to connect to a larger local hospital in order to gain access to the Epic EHR network.

Woman’s sent out a request for information (RFI) in late March seeking a potential partner that would give them access to cost sharing services and an EHR system such as Epic.

Several Louisiana-based healthcare systems responded to the RFI, but Barbara Griffith, Woman’s CEO, said deciding on LCMC Health was a natural choice.

“Similar to Woman’s, their organization grew out of a specialty hospital, so they understand us and our mission,” Griffith explained in an email to hospital staff. “They are a nonprofit system of six acute care hospitals. They know what it takes to grow a specialty hospital just like Woman’s.”

Griffith emphasized that LCMC Health is not purchasing Woman’s.

“We remain independent and our brand remains unchanged,” Griffith noted in the email. “Both organizations will maintain separate support and administrative functions, but these advancements will give our staff more connectivity to patients and other physicians, allowing us to make faster and more informed decisions.”

Woman’s estimates that contract negotiations and EHR implementation will take 12 to 18 months.

LCMC Health owns a sizable share of the New Orleans healthcare market, including Children’s Hospital New Orleans, East Jefferson General Hospital, West Jefferson Medical Center, New Orleans East Hospital, Touro, and University Medical Center.

Woman’s issued the RFI shortly after news broke that Ochsner Health Systems, the largest healthcare system in Louisiana and largest private employer in the state, would be acquiring the largest independent OB/GYN group practice in the Baton Rouge market, Louisiana Woman’s Healthcare (LWH), which is separate from Woman’s Hospital but does operate as a partner.

Ochsner has a fully integrated Epic EHR system. LWH officials have said that access to Epic’s EHR was their main reason for joining Ochsner.

LWH occupies three floors of the Physician’s Office Building at Woman’s and performs more than 62 percent of all deliveries. LWH said that it plans to continue their partnership with Woman’s.

However, the deal has implications for a competitive market. Healthcare experts say that EHR implementations enable integrated providers like Ochsner and LCMC to increase interoperability and navigate patients to their care facilities for better control of care utilization and cost.

As LWH physicians connect to Ochsner’s Epic system, Ochsner effectively forms a connection with LWH’s network of 70,000 patients.

Woman’s explored buying access to Epic on its own, but ultimately decided that the price tag of $200 million over the next seven years was too expensive.

It is still unclear how much it will cost Woman’s to buy into LCMC’s Epic system.

A large ambulatory facility, such as LCMC or Ochsner, has two choices for connecting to the Epic EHR network: direct contracting through the vendor, or Community Connect, which includes a contract with a nearby hospital.

While Community Connect helps expand cost-effective access to Epic’s EHR system, a 2020 KLAS Pulse Check report found that midsize to large ambulatory organizations report a better experience when dealing directly with the vendor.  

On a 100-point scale, respondents who worked directly with Epic graded the vendor a 91.3 overall score. Those who worked with Community Connect graded it a 78.8 overall score.

Respondents who worked directly with Epic were also more likely to recommend that avenue, scoring it an 8.7 on a 9-point scale, compared to respondents who utilized Community Connect (6.8).

“Those with direct Epic contracts—who therefore receive support directly from the vendor—say that Epic works collaboratively with them to solve problems,” wrote the authors of the report. “Support personnel are described as knowledgeable and empowered to make changes or fixes that improve the EMR experience and help users work more efficiently.”