Q: Can you talk about the application solutions? You are Epic first but how do you choose when enabling these digital features and functionalities that your consumers demand?
Reid: We have a Strategic Technology Investor Committee and our three pillars of our backbone assets. We have Epic for our EHR. There’s Microsoft, which runs our desktop server infrastructure. Then, there’s Infor, our ERP.
Our guiding principle is, we’ll look to these vendors first—not always, not only. Previously, it used to be, “Hey, I went to a conference, found this great tool, and I want to use it.” Before we knew it, someone acquired it so we’d be trying to figure out how to integrate it into interfaces and then, it’d have duplicative capability we already owned.
We’ve been able to redirect that now to facilitate good conversations. People have varying opinions of Epic based on where they are, what they’ve been listening to, or reading, lately. What we’ve learned through this is, it’s helpful to enable people understand the significance of the investment we’ve made. This is a choice that we made as a system for our EHR, and it is no small investment. If we ever do something outside of Epic, we have to then, do it intentionally. We have to make that decision that we’re going to add incremental costs for whatever reason—either Epic doesn’t have it or it doesn’t meet our needs the way we need it to. But we try and use an 80-20 rule in those conversations. If we can do this at Epic, Microsoft, or Infor and it meets 80% of the need and is not introducing any kind of unacceptable risk or safety issue, then, that’s what we’re going to start.
That’s been very effective and ensured we certainly have avenues for complementary solutions in areas where we really don’t.
