SUCCESS STORY

Accelerating Enterprise AI Adoption & Speed to Value

Although leadership at an academic health system recognized the transformative potential of clinical and revenue cycle AI models, they also understood that successful implementation required more than simply activating new technology.

The organization partnered with Impact Advisors to develop and implement a scalable Epic AI Operating Model that accelerated the deployment of nine AI models, improved governance and adoption, and established a sustainable framework for ongoing AI innovation and value realization across the enterprise.
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A seven-hospital academic health system with almost 1,300 beds sought to accelerate its adoption of Epic’s rapidly expanding artificial intelligence capabilities. The organization faced a familiar challenge emerging across leading health systems: Epic AI innovation is advancing quickly, but internal governance, resourcing, and operational structures at many hospitals and health systems have not yet evolved to support enterprise-scale adoption. Limited implementation resources—many participating on a
volunteer basis—made it difficult to move beyond isolated pilots and realize measurable value.

To establish a structured, scalable approach, the health system engaged Impact Advisors to design and operationalize an enterprise Epic AI program capable of accelerating implementation while ensuring governance alignment, adoption, and sustainable long-term growth.

Establishing the Foundation

Impact Advisors began the engagement with an accelerated one-month discovery and maturity assessment focused on six foundational pillars essential to enterprise AI success: strategy, governance and decision-making, people and roles, implementation management, data and technology alignment, and adoption and change management. The assessment confirmed that while enthusiasm for AI innovation was strong, the organization lacked a unified operating model to guide prioritization, implementation, and evaluation of Epic AI models. Without standardized decision frameworks or coordinated execution processes, scaling new capabilities risked becoming slow, inconsistent, and resource intensive. 

Working collaboratively with clinical, operational, IT, and data science leaders, Impact Advisors developed a comprehensive roadmap outlining global milestones, implementation dependencies, and resourcing requirements across all phases of AI deployment—from proof of concept through enterprise scaling and long-term maintenance. This foundational work established the structure needed to transition AI efforts from experimentation to disciplined operational execution.

A Structured Approach to Enterprise AI Implementation

Impact Advisors partnered closely with organizational leadership to build a repeatable Epic AI Operating Model designed to support both immediate implementation goals and future innovation. Central to this effort was the detailed Epic AI Playbook created by Impact Advisors that provides tactical guidance across every implementation phase, including planning, proof of concept, proof of value, scaling, and ongoing maintenance. The playbook aligned governance, project management, technical build processes, measurement strategies, and change management activities into a single coordinated framework.

To support real-world execution, Impact Advisors established cross-functional delivery pods responsible for coordinating stakeholders, managing timelines, translating requirements, and aligning workflows with operations. Clear RACI structures defined accountability across sponsors, informaticists, analysts, data scientists, and trainers, enabling efficient decision-making despite constrained internal resources. 

In parallel, the Impact Advisors team led both operational and technical project management activities, including Epic vendor coordination, prerequisite planning, build and configuration decisions, Change Advisory Board alignment, security design, upgrade management, and end-user support. Model implementation efforts were continuously guided by Impact Advisors’ quantifiable Go/No-Go decision framework, allowing health system leadership to objectively determine whether individual AI models should scale enterprise-wide or be refined or sunset based on demonstrated value and ongoing costs.

Equally important, Impact Advisors supported training, communication, and adoption efforts through curated tip sheets, education materials, office hours sessions, and end-user engagement strategies—ensuring end users understood not only how to use the tools, but how they enhanced patient care and workflow efficiency.

Scaling Clinical AI Across the Enterprise

Through this structured approach, Impact Advisors helped the health system rapidly advance nine Epic AI models from early planning into production-scale deployment:

  • Inpatient Insights
  • Draft Hospital Course in Discharge Summary
  • Outpatient Insights
  • ED Insights
  • In Basket ART (Augmented Response Technology)
  • In Basket Categorization & Routing
  • End of Shift Care Plan Note
  • Risk of Unplanning Readmission
  • PB Coding Assistant
 
Implementation timelines demonstrated the effectiveness of the operating model, with several models progressing from planning to proof-of-concept go-live in as little as one to two months—significantly accelerating adoption compared to traditional deployment approaches. The enterprise-wide Inpatient Insights pilot generated approximately 300 AI-assisted clinical summaries weekly, with strong clinician response:
 
  • 89% of providers reported the tools were helpful
  • 60% reported reduced chart review time
  • 60% indicated a positive impact on patient care
 
Additional pilots involving automated discharge documentation achieved adoption across hundreds of clinicians, with users citing meaningful time savings and improved documentation quality.

Positive Impact

Beyond individual model deployments, the engagement fundamentally transformed how the health system approaches AI innovation. Impact Advisors helped establish
a structured Epic AI Operating Model that now serves as a reusable foundation for future implementations— enabling the organization to move confidently beyond
pilots and scale AI capabilities across clinical and operational domains.

Leaders noted that the engagement accelerated organizational readiness and helped teams envision how AI could support future care delivery. One program leader shared that the partnership “helped activate our teams and move us beyond experimentation into real execution.” Another stakeholder emphasized that Impact Advisors operated as true partners, consistently adapting engagement intensity to meet evolving organizational needs while maintaining delivery momentum.

Most importantly, the health system now possesses a governance-aligned framework capable of keeping pace with Epic’s rapidly evolving AI roadmap—ensuring future models can be evaluated, implemented, and scaled efficiently.

Enabling Sustainable AI Transformation and "Speed to Value"

This engagement underscores a critical reality facing health systems nationwide: enterprise AI adoption cannot be achieved by simply enabling new models. Sustainable success requires a structured operating model that integrates governance, project and capacity management, technical alignment, performance measurement, and change management at every phase of implementation.

Impact Advisors’ deep Epic expertise, healthcare operational experience, and pragmatic implementation methodology enable organizations to accelerate AI adoption while quickly building internal capability and long-term autonomy. As Epic
continues to expand its AI ecosystem, our clients are well-positioned not only to implement emerging models faster but to do so in a disciplined, scalable manner that delivers measurable clinical and operational value.

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