Akanksha Jayanthi from Becker’s Hospital Review has aggregated a list of Epic purchases in 2015. The article does make the disclaimer that some hospitals and health systems have not yet disclosed the price of their Epic purchase. So, there are likely more Epic purchases. However, the Becker’s list gives you some insight into how much it costs to purchase Epic.
- Partners HealthCare: $1.2 billion
- Lehigh Valley Health Network: $200 million
- Mayo Clinic: “Hundreds of millions”
- Lahey Hospital & Medical Center: $160 million
- Lifespan: $100 million
- Erlanger Health System: $97 million
- Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare: $54 million
- Saint Francis Medical Center: $43 million
This list isn’t surprising for me. In fact, the most surprising part is that Epic would sell a $43 million implementation. That would have previously been unheard of from Epic. However, we’ve seen Epic moving slowly down the chain. I’m not sure if that’s because the top of the chain has dried up or something else, but Epic has definitely been doing smaller implementations which they wouldn’t have considered before.
What should also be noted is that many of these numbers are estimates. With projects of this size, it’s really easy for the cost of the EHR implementation to balloon out of control. In fact, the Partners HealthCare Epic implementation at the top of the list is a great example. It was originally estimated at $600 million and you can see that estimate has doubled.
When you look at these numbers, is it any surprise that investors want to take down Epic? I’d like to see a list of the Epic renewal prices. Can you imagine what the Epic renewal for Kaiser’s $9 billion Epic EHR implementation will be? That’s where the opportunity lies for someone wanting to disrupt Epic.
