Gabriel Perna has a great article on Healthcare Informatics discussing an EHR conversion that I hadn’t considered. What happens when a hospital system acquires another hospital system and they both use the Epic EHR? Here’s the challenge as described in the article:
“As we got into it, we realized Epic had done [a conversion from] IC Chart [InteGreat from Med3000] before, they had done Cerner-to-Epic conversions, they had done McKesson-to-Epic conversions. They had done those before, and they do them well. They hadn’t done Epic-to-Epic before. That was the area where they were least experienced in. It was a lot more work to do,” says [Bob] DeGrand, who assumed the position of CIO [of Froedtert Health] in January of 2009, a few months after the West Bend affiliation became official.
As we continue on our path of hospital system consolidation, this is going to become more and more of an issue. As those familiar with Epic know, every Epic installation is unique. I was recently told by someone that even within the all Epic Kaiser there are multiple Epic installations and they have a challenge communicating with each other. Now think about what that means if you’re trying to merged two different Epic installations.
The article also points out that one of the biggest challenges in a merge like this is overlapping patients and ensuring that you merge them properly. Patient identity is a big challenge in any hospital system, but even more important when you’re looking to merge two large hospital systems that have relatively close proximity with similar patient populations.
I’d be interested to hear from other people who might have gone through an Epic to Epic conversion. What challenges did you face? Would you have rather had a Cerner to Epic conversion?