https://mailchi.mp/e1b9f9c249d0/the-weekly-gist-september-15-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

Two of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems, Salt Lake City, UT-based Intermountain Healthcare and Pittsburgh, PA-based UPMC, have recently announced plans to end their electronic health record (EHR) contracts with Oracle Cerner and transition, enterprise-wide, to Epic.

Intermountain, which operates 33 hospitals across seven states, plans to integrate Epic’s EHR into all of its facilities by 2025; its legacy SCL Health hospitals in Colorado and Montana already use Epic.

UPMC, which operates 40 hospitals in three states, has set mid-2026 as the target for consolidating its nine EHRs into a single platform with Epic. It has been using Oracle Cerner in inpatient settings and Epic for ambulatory care.

Both systems cited provider feedback and a desire to simplify patient record-keeping as key reasons behind their decisions to switch. 

The Gist: With two more marquee health systems jumping ship for Epic, Oracle Cerner faces a steeper battle to maintain a foothold with health systems and may need to rethink its target market and value proposition. 

Cerner initially appealed to large, progressive, value-oriented systems with highly customizable offerings, but over the years the resulting “Franken-Cerner” systems (as one CIO put it) became hard to maintain and scale. 

Meanwhile, Epic continues to grow its lead in the domestic EHR market: it now covers roughly half of acute-care beds in the US and holds records on 78 percent of US patients. 

Sitting on troves of health data, Epic is also well-positioned to become a leader in the rollout of next-generation healthcare AI, which it has already set in motion through its partnership with Microsoft.