Last Updated | November 17, 2023
Executive Summary – What is Epic software?
What is Epic software? A 40-year-old healthcare software company with dependable telehealth features, patient portals, scheduling, and billing capabilities, it is one of the most well-established options for large hospitals – as well as customizable for SMEs in the healthcare business, and hence the subject of our debate today.
Overview: What is Epic software?
Are you searching to know what is Epic Software? You’re at the right place. Today, M.D.s and physicians are loaded with multiple administrative tasks- from patient records and prescription notes to order forms and billing; these tasks can deter doctors from providing the quality healthcare that they want to deliver to their patients. The demanding world of the healthcare industry requires new and innovative solutions to traditional problems.
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) can lighten this burden, but sometimes they can even increase it. However, the award-winning Epic is an exception. But what type of software is Epic and how it’s revolutionizing healthcare is what we’ll look deeper into in this article.
In accordance with healthcare compliance consulting, the Epic software application offers countless solutions to streamline all facets of healthcare administration, patient communication, and workflow.
Learn more about Epic Corporation and how it supports the healthcare industry with its software development.
What is Epic Software in Healthcare?
One of the top healthcare I.T. companies, Epic or Epic Systems Corporation, handles a private healthcare software business. Epic essentially designs, develops, supports, sells, and licenses proprietary electronic medical record software. On the whole, the Epic software application is known as an Epic EMR or Epic. The company’s medical software is focused on its Chronicles database administration system.
Epic applications have multiple functions related to patient care, such as scheduling and registration; clinical systems for physicians, nurses, emergency staff, and other care providers. It also supports billing systems for insurers and other systems for pharmacists, lab technologists, and radiologists. Without worrying about security, the Epic documentation system allows healthcare professionals to view and exchange recorded records with other hospitals or EHRs. Additionally, Epic healthcare information system provides a specific digitized framework that stores and provides all necessary records and information that a healthcare provider may be in need of.
Epic software is used by 54% of hospitals to keep medical records of patients in the U.S. and 2.5% of patients worldwide. With a vast amount of data about each patient’s health, it is too big a task for providers to streamline their workflow. Epic, therefore, is a great help to provide information quickly and accurately whenever needed at all-important times, as well as it gives patients access to their records.
Even when held against Meditech Expanse (another renowned EHR solution), Epic Software confidently shares 8.47% of the market share in EHR while Meditech only shares about 0.84% in the Meditech vs Epic comparison.
Epic’s software solution offers countless other innovations in healthcare, such as:
- Automated billing
- Pre-built custom templates for forms and orders
- Revenue cycle tracking and analysis
- Mobile app connectivity
- Telehealth integration and support
- Customized modules for multiple specialties
Epic’s clinical decision support HIPAA team helps healthcare organizations to comply with HIPAA medical records release laws. Therefore, healthcare providers can access and share documents with other hospitals or other EHRs without any security concerns through Epic.
What Are Epic Modules?
Wondering about what is epic software healthcare? Well, to get a better understanding, let’s take a look at the epic modules.
Here is an extensive list of Epic modules which are provided by Epic healthcare software to streamline and connect the patient experience to improve their healthcare seamlessly;
- Epic Hyperdrive
- Epic Ambulatory Module
- Epic Bones Module
- Epic Haiku
- Epic ASAP Module
- Epic Healthy Planet
- Epic Beacon Oncology Module
- Epic Lumens
- Epic Beaker Module
- MyChart Bedside
What do Epic Systems do in Healthcare?
Epic Systems helps address challenges in managing healthcare projects by offering integration across a range of functions and settings. Since the Epic EHR system is cloud-based, it is available on all devices having an internet browser installed. It is one of the best electronic medical record systems used by over 250 healthcare organizations across the country. Currently, the Epic system holds medical records of 45% of the U.S. population.
Following are some of Epic’s prominent systems followed by explanations of what they do:
EpicCare
EpicCare is the core EHR product of the company, tailored for physicians and companies centered on decision support, clinical care, and streamlined processes.
It helps healthcare providers improve their patient’s health and wellbeing. Its workflows, specialty applications, and screens are flexible and customizable to fit the personalized needs of an organization.
EpicCare’s embedded analytics and decision support tools enable clinical practices to provide safe and high-quality care.
Healthy Planet
Using data interoperability, Healthy Planet improves population health management measures.
Healthy Planet is Epic Systems’ module for accountable care and community health management. Epic Systems’ this module was developed to serve ACOs in response to the Affordable Care Act. This tool is used in healthcare to track how well organizations are serving their patients utilizing different types of features.
Epic Healthy Planet system module incorporates real-time and predictive analytics, chronic disease registries, wellness registries, and daily metrics dashboards to provide all essential data.
MyChart
Powered by Epic, MyChart comes with many patient engagement features such as family health data. MyChart gives patients access to their testing and vaccine status. As soon as a patient is eligible, they can schedule an appointment for the Covid19 vaccine through this application.
Even if some patients get treated at different healthcare facilities, they can view their test results, medical bills, medications, price estimates, upcoming appointments, and more all in one place. MyChart brings personal and family medical information to your fingertips. It allows you to text your doctors, schedule appointments, complete questionnaires, attend e-visits, and get more active in managing your health.
What is Epic Software used for?
With so many vendors available in the market, Epic is one of the most popular and comprehensive EHRs. Epic Software is used for keeping electronic health records (EHRs) of patients. After developing the Epic system for desktop computers, healthcare mobile app developers have also designed Epic to be easily accessed from mobile phones.
Organizations choose Epic because it is the best blend of features and usability. Having the most extensive functionality, Epic is not only used in solo practices but is also implemented as an epic EHR demo to be effectively shared by the entire healthcare community. Large hospitals and health systems primarily use epic software in the U.S. to store, access, organize, and share electronic medical records.
Healthcare providers use Epic because it provides personalized and detailed healthcare records with significantly reduced errors. Speeding up many processes offers immediate results for both- doctors and patients. Using Epic, doctors make custom forms or orders and then automate them; they also record all details according to relevance. Patients use the patient portal with MyChart to view and share their records with other doctors, even outside of Epic. The easy access to data this software provides helps improve the overall patient experience. Since physicians find operating Epic Software easy to use, they deliver more personal and quality care to their patients.
What is an Epic Software Development?
Epic software development is the process of developing Epic Software for the healthcare industry. It is developed with cloud hosting for users who do not want to maintain their servers. Epic software development offers short-term optimization and implementation consultants. It is an EHR solution for catering to several specialties.
It is developed for various practices, including epic for small practices, independent practices, community hospitals, and multi-specialty hospital groups. This EHR is developed with a range of features for practices, adding modules depending on their specialty. It strongly focuses on patient engagement and providing remote care.
Epic has also developed a patient portal available as a native application for iOS and Android operating systems. This app gives patients more flexibility to manage their healthcare requirements.
In addition to that, Epic offers various telehealth options such as supporting video visits, post-surgical follow-ups, and patient monitoring. Another result of Epic software development is open API, known as Open. Epic, aims to simplify integration with third-party apps and software.
What is Epic Software for Hospitals?
This brings us to our next big question: What is Epic medical software and how is it changing the scope of healthcare? Epic Software is medical software that provides hospitals with multiple utilities for their health management system. Epic provides EMR systems for many hospitals, including the Cleveland Clinic, UC Davis Medical Center (in Sacramento), Johns Hopkins Hospital, Sinai Medical Center (in Los Angeles), and all campuses of Mayo Clinic.
But then what is Epic hospital software and why is it called so? Well, it is fairly the same concept. The epic medical software is also considered as a hospital software for it furnishes a communication system between physicians and a patient, which helps them build better relationships. Epic allows hospitals and other healthcare institutions to develop customized channels for questions, test or procedure results, and video visits. Here’s a list of features Epic software offers hospitals:
- Appointment Management
- Clinical Workflow
- Billing Management
- Insurance and Claims
- Document Management
- Patient Demographics
- Lab Integration
- Patient Portal
- Medical Templates
- Patient History
- Voice Recognition
- Reporting and Analytics
- Referrals
- Scheduling
- e-Prescription
Through Epic Software, all physicians working in a hospital can access databases, order entry, enter medical records, schedule appointments, and manage the hospital workflow. Epic EHR is a streamlined and deeply integrated solution; it is one go-to system that enables adopters to integrate clinical sites.
Being a closed-source platform, Epic is incompatible with integrating with other hospital software for consolidating patient data. To help hospitals seamlessly integrate all their systems, HL7 integration solutions and Folio3 healthcare integration team are great ways. These integrations help hospitals fully integrate all their systems across the entire hospital system.
Top 5 Things You Don’t Know About Epic Software
Epic Dental Software – How Do Dentists use Epic?
Dental Services use Epic’s comprehensive health record system to provide patients access to the MyChart patient portal. With this, patients get secure digital access to their health records and the ability to schedule their appointments, securely text providers, and pay bills online with the Epic billing system.
Irvine, Pacific Dental Services (PDS), based in California, delivers administrative and business services for dental offices. By equipping members with the most effective operational practices, this organization fosters dentists to focus on clinical care delivery using the latest technology. It has opted for Epic to boost care coordination for specialists and dentists.
Implementing the Epic dental system allows PDS to fill gaps in care, reduce models of duplicate medical records, and expand care continuity for the patients attended by PDS-supported dentists. Dentists use Epic Dental Software to gain the ability to connect with other clinicians through Epic EHR implementation to exchange medical data seamlessly.
Additionally, dentists reduce the I.T. burden of having too many systems to run their clinics with Epic software. Epic is a fully integrated system that helps dentists in multiple ways- giving them and their patients ease to continue the dental care process.
What is Epic Software Experience in Healthcare
Epic is the leading electronic medical record system provider that provides healthcare with industry solutions for ambulatory, inpatient clinical, departmental, revenue cycle, access, and practice management functions. Hence, what is Epic experience in healthcare is quite a common question. The Epic experience in healthcare is the utilization of the Epic EMR system experience by healthcare organizations. Epic experience gives healthcare organizations enhanced reporting, increased efficiency and productivity, data analytics, and improved patient care.
The healthcare providers using Epic experience a lot of ease with patient management because Epic Software streamlines all their processes and helps them save time for building better relationships with their patients.
Though Epic experience may be costly for some practices, it is an all-inclusive system experience that reduces many additional costs of buying more than one software to run its processes. Epic experience can also be taken in a sense for candidates who want to be Epic certified. They must take up a training program and pass an exam to obtain certification to get Epic expertise.
This Epic experience helps individuals in healthcare to fly to any hospital and offer Epic integration solutions since they would be certified to do so.
What is an Epic Experience in Nursing?
Epic experience in nursing means nurses having the ability to use the Epic Software system. In nursing, Registered Nurses are required to get training for gaining Epic experience. This Epic training for nurses is a two-step process. First, nurses have to watch a batch of prerequisites e-learnings. Then, they can attend lab sessions to practice what they have learned. If the nurses do not attend the lab session, they are only needed to watch the e-learnings.
Since Epic requires organizations working on Epic implementation to get certified, they send their staff members to acquire Epic experience. Their organizations typically sponsor the nurses who are working in a hospital to get Epic experience.
Epic experience enables nurses to track and update patients’ files and medical records in a safe and secure Epic EHR system. They also learn to communicate and document care plans.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Epic Software?
Epic Software is an optimal health record system. However, it is not without disadvantages. So, here are Epic software’s advantages and disadvantages listed below:
Advantages
- Helps physicians thrive
EpicCare streamlines everyday tasks to help practices get the job done quickly. Its healthcare app U.I. designs mobile apps that keep providers connected to patients wherever they go.
- Fully integrated system
Epic System encompasses clinical information, registration, patient scheduling, and billing. Being a fully integrated system, it is a widely used practice-proven system. Epic also has applications integrated with the whole system to allow doctors to access the records from any device anytime.
- Productivity
Epic is a top-notch acute and ambulatory EMR for increasing physician productivity and effectiveness of care.
- Best for Modern practices
It contains all the features essential for a modern practice to work efficiently and maintain an adequate medical record.
Disadvantages
- Bugged Updates
Epic frequently makes updates to its software that leave users with catastrophic problems. This increases the burden for healthcare providers.
- Confusing Records
It is sometimes quite complicated to work with Epic EMR. For instance, Epic printed out the entire record when a doctor tried to print an X-ray report.
- Time demanding
While using Epic, it sometimes takes an unusual time to sit in front of the computer. So, it is not helpful to use Epic for improving patient care.
- Low-quality training
Some nurses find Epic’s training inadequate because it takes them weeks and weeks of training, and still, they do not know what they are doing.
How to use Epic Charting for Nurses?
Charting is the recording of medical information about a patient. Nurses can use Epic charting since it simplifies nurses’ workflows. Nurses can also use time-savers in Epic to improve care for patients in severe need of medical care.
Epic charting system allows nursing staff to document health-related details, including scans, lab results, and whether a patient is on a ventilator. Easy charting helps them prepare for more patients, especially during the spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 when many people get affected by it. Efficient charting makes nurses work more efficiently. Charting allows nursing staff to document health-related details, including scans, lab results, and whether a patient is on a ventilator. Easy charting helps them prepare for more patients, especially during the spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 when many people get affected by it.
Using charting helps nurses add essential data about patients such as their illness, medications they are using previously, and doctors that see them, and can update that information from time to time.
Nurses need to chart only abnormal values, and as some items for nursing charting are optional for nurses, they can only add essential values. Utilizing charting helps nurses use a quick admission process that focuses on the most critical information needed to admit a patient immediately.
What is the Cost of Epic Software?
No matter what the software system is, it costs a lot. EMR software pricing depends primarily on the features healthcare providers choose and the number of users a practice has. The cost for a self-hosted Epic EMR software starts from $1,200 and can exceed $500,000 for large hospitals and clinics.
Factors like customization and cloud-based or self-hosted are also crucial in determining the cost of the software. So, the price may vary for different organizations. Buying an Epic EMR system at an up-front price can cost around $1200 to $500,000 or even more.
Smaller practices may take advantage of using free cloud-based system software. In these free systems, features are pretty limited, which makes them unsuitable for large practices. Take an instance of how much does Epic costs a healthcare organization. In 2015, Partners HealthCare began using Epic in a project in which the initial cost of Epic was $1.2 billion. Toward the end of the project, the price increased.
Although many researchers have found that Epic is the best EMR system because of its support system, small practices may find it impossible to employ it because of its high cost. Epic for smaller practices is expensive because they have to buy all their hardware.
FAQs: What is Epic Software
Who owns Epic medical software?
An American billionaire, Judith R. Faulkner, is the CEO and founder of Epic medical software. Judith founded the software company in 1979 in Wisconsin, with the name “Human Services Computing,” later changed to Epic.
How does Epic meet HIPAA requirements?
Epic Systems meet the requirements of HIPAA in healthcare by focusing on securing patient privacy. Epic assures to keep patient data secure, whether the company uses the EHR software on a desktop computer, web browser, or a mobile device.
Is Epic an EHR or EMR?
Epic Software is an electronic medical record (EMR) system. Epic Corporation develops both EMR and EHR solutions to help organizations take better care of their patients.
What is an Epic in software development?
An epic is an extensive work divided into several small stories, also known as “Issues” in Jira. Multiple teams, different projects, and even different boards are included in one epic. Epics are always delivered over as a series of sprints.
What companies use Epic software in the USA?
Most of Epic’s clients are based in the USA. Here are some of the companies or hospitals that use Epic Software in USA:
- St. Elizabeth Healthcare
- OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital
- CHRISTUS Trinity Mother Frances Health System
- Princeton Baptist Medical Center
- Presbyterian Healthcare Services
- Saint Francis Health System
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