Why BIDMC Is Shunning Epic, Developing Its Own EMR

Though its price tag be formidable and installation highly complex, the Epic EMR is practically a no-brainer decision for many hospitals.  As Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CIO John Halamka notes, things are certainly like that in the Boston metro, where BIDMC’s competitors are largely on Epic or in the process of installing Epic.

Why are Halamka’s competitors all going with Epic?  He proposes the following reasons:

*  Epic installs get clinicians to buy in to a single configuration of a single product. Its project methodology standardizes governance, processes and staffing in a way that hospitals might not be able to do on their own.

* Epic fends off clinicians’ request for new innovations that the hospital staff might not be able to support. IT merely has to tell clinicians that they’ll have to wait until Epic releases its next iteration.

* Epic is a safe investment for meeting Meaningful Use Stage 2, as it has a history of helping hospitals and providers achieve MU compliance.

* CIOs generally don’t get fired for buying Epic, as it’s the popular move to make, despite being reliant on 1990s era client-server technology delivered via terminal services that require signficant staffing to support. (Actually, it does happen but it’s still rare.)

*  These days, hospitals have moved away from “best of breed” EMR implementations to the need for integration across the enterprise.  As Halamka notes, such integration is important in a world where Accountable Care/global capitated risk is becoming a key factor in reimbursement, so having a continuous record across episodes of care is critical. Epic seems to address this issue.

But BIDMC is a holdout. As Dr. Halamka notes in his blog, BIDMC is one of the last hospitals in Eastern Massachusetts continuing to build and buy components to create its own EMR. He’s convinced that going with the in-house development method — creating a cloud-hosted, thin client, mobile friendly and highly interoperable system — is ultimately cheaper and allows for faster innovation.

In closing, Halamka wonders whether his will end up being one of the very last hospitals to continue an ongoing EMR development program.  I think he’s answered his own question: it seems likely that BIDMC’s competitors will keep jumping on the Epic bandwagon for all of the reasons he outlines.

Will they do well with Epic?  Will they find later on that the capital investment and support costs are untenable? I think we’ll have the answers within a scant year or two. Personally, I think BIDMC will have the last laugh, but we’ll just have to see.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

1 Comment

Click here to post a comment
   

Categories