Consolidating Instances & Achieving “Systemness” Post Merger
A large Midwest health system that had recently grown through a significant M&A event was facing the increasingly common industry problem of trying to migrate all its sites to the same Epic EHR instance.
The goal was to have the same processes, policies, and applications across the enterprise to achieve economies of scale and provide better patient service. Although the health system’s newly formed “regions” were already each live on their own unique Epic instance, the decision was made to migrate them all to one of the three regions’ existing production ecosystem. The chosen region’s Epic instance was selected due to its advanced capabilities, including HIMSS Stage 7 and Epic Gold Stars Level 10 recognition. It was also the most financially robust among the three regions.
Impact Advisors was brought in as an active part of program leadership to assist with rapidly rolling out the single instance of Epic to 10 of the organization’s hospitals, thousands of employed providers, over 400 Community Connect independent physician clinics, and tens of thousands of employees.
Change Management: Key to Success
A key challenge in this engagement was getting the other regions to accept the chosen region’s foundation build and operational processes. Impact Advisors’ Operational Change Management Program Manager was pivotal in building relationships with key merger executives to promote “systemness” across the organization. In parallel, Impact Advisors’ Advisory Services team helped reinforce this alignment by benchmarking performance metrics that demonstrated how the regional model chosen outperformed the other regions, promoting an understanding of why its build and processes were selected. The team also leveraged its robust cost-benefit modeling, third-party application rationalization, and Epic implementation methodologies and toolkits to ensure the success of the migration.
The Joint Team's Achievements
The migration to a single instance of Epic involved combining patient data in more than 20 hospitals, adding more than 4,000 beds, over 300 ambulatory locations, and almost 450 Community Connect clinics. More than 6.5 million patient data records were moved in total over the course of the engagement. Overall, there were almost 2,000 team members and 41 different implementation teams involved.
In partnership with the client organization, Impact Advisors successfully led the effort to consolidate and standardize a sprawling ecosystem of nearly 350 third-party applications in use across all three regions. Through the application rationalization process, the team reduced the number of solutions to under 200 — a significant achievement. Impact Advisors’ deep experience in change management and Epic workflows was essential to overcoming clinician resistance, as many were reluctant to part with their preferred tools and platforms.
Positive Impact
Impact Advisors’ efforts to help bring this large health system’s regions onto the same instance of the Epic EHR led to benefits on multiple fronts. A single, shared Epic production instance, along with standardized processes and policies across the enterprise, drove efficiencies, economies of scale, and enabled more automation throughout the health system, thereby lowering costs. Onboarding and training for clinicians and staff are now optimized and streamlined. Patients have also benefited from improved service and a consistent, unified experience regardless of region.
How May We Support You
Successfully migrating from multiple instances of Epic to a single, standardized solution across the enterprise in the wake of an M&A event requires a partner with a deep and diverse set of capabilities. Impact Advisors can help you with:
- Implementation planning
- Budget / cost / benefit modeling
- Application rationalization
- Implementation program leadership
- Operational change management assistance
- Integration leadership and assistance
- Implementation analysts
- Managed Services