Q: In announcing this deal, Mayo noted it will be a partnership of "several decades." What do you see in the years ahead?Ī: Decades is a long time to try to predict. Do you think Epic is well-poised and agile enough to evolve with those two aspects? Q: Some say we're in the " post-EHR era," while RCM technology is also being forced to evolve for a new reimbursement landscape. The EHR is not central to that mission, but it is strongly supporting our longterm goals to do that. Because of that, we have a focus on how we can support that mission: providing: Mayo-vetted knowledge, outside Mayo. We also wanted to continue to do better and advance what we can do with revenue cycle management, to make bills easier to understand for patients and to address upcoming changes in reimbursement as we move from fee-for-service to value.īeyond that basic level of operations, Mayo has been pretty clear that we have a big focus on knowledge to delivery, which, as our CEO has described, means that we view knowledge as our most scalable asset – as opposed to brick and mortar facilities. Practice convergence is our first-and-foremost goal for what we're trying to accomplish with this project. And we really believe that an integrated EHR, across all of our organizations, can help us with that core mission of meeting patients' needs. Q: What are some of the strategic imperatives for Mayo you think Epic will be well-poised to help with?Ī: Part of our core operations is to make sure we continue to keep focus on meeting patients' needs first. But the fact that they have such robust connectivity to other EHRs as well really alleviated that concern for us. There are many Epic sites that we do want to communicate with. Obviously they've been focusing a lot on Epic to Epic communication, and that's fine. But when we looked at things like, for instance, their ability to connect via the Direct protocol to many other EHRs, and the volume that's floating across that network, from Epic to other EHRs, we were pretty impressed. We heard those concerns, of course, and evaluated them. Was that a concern of yours? Do you think those charges are baseless? Or is data sharing something Epic is learning to do better, in your view?Ī: We're comfortable that they are strongly interoperable with other systems. Q: Epic is often knocked for a real or perceived lack of interoperability. As we looked at what met our needs, across all of our practices, around revenue cycle and our interests around patient engagement and so on, although it was a difficult choice, in the end it was a pretty clear choice that Epic was a better fit. What was it about Epic that made you want to try something new?Ī: We've been a longtime customer of Cerner, and they've been a really great partner for us. You'd been a Cerner customer for a while. Q: So you made a fairly big switch, then. So we fairly quickly focused our attention on Cerner and Epic, which should be no surprise. GE has announced that they're exiting the business with that product. And it became clear that the two vendors who could best meet our needs are Epic and Cerner. We issued RFPs to those two organizations, Epic and others. Q: When you started looking around at your options, what were some of the big things you considered?Ī: We have been longtime customers of both GE, for their Centricity enterprise product, and of Cerner. We had done this many times before, and that was time for a fresh view. But we started to take a very serious next look at this issue in the spring of 2013. Across all of our locations – the Midwest, Arizona and Florida. Q: When did Mayo Clinic start thinking a change needed to be made with your EHR and revenue cycle systems?Ī: Mayo has been steadily working toward a convergence of its practice for many years. In an interview with Healthcare IT News, Mayo Clinic Chief Information Officer Cris Ross explains why – and discusses his strategy for ensuring this massive, multi-year project stays on time and on budget. In one of the biggest health IT announcements in recent memory, the Mayo Clinic earlier this month selected Epic to replace its existing electronic health record and revenue cycle technology.
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