When Wright Lassiter III took over as CommonSpirit CEO in 2022 — three years after the merger between Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives and San Francisco-based Dignity Health was completed — one of his key goals was to unify the health system into a single, integrated entity.
"We were an organization that still functioned a lot like the vestiges of its component parts," Mr. Lassiter said Jan. 14 at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. "While respecting legacy is critically important, one of the levers that CommonSpirit expected to drive success in its alignment in 2019 was to function as a unified system, to be integrated."
Mr. Lassiter highlighted the complexity of the 137-hospital system's technology landscape but expressed confidence in CommonSpirit's leadership team to successfully drive transformation.
"We had more EHR versions than I have fingers on both hands," he said. "We're moving very fast and aggressively toward one EHR platform … and a single [enterprise resource planning] platform."
CommonSpirit has more than 10 different EHRs across its five regions — California, Central, Mountain, Northwest and South — including four distinct instances of Epic, a spokesperson for the health system told Becker's.
Consolidating to one EHR and ERP platform will eliminate much of the legacy inefficiencies at the health system. "Though this requires significant time, phasing, and capital, our board and senior management are fully committed," Mr. Lassiter said.
The Chicago-based system recently outlined five key areas to improve performance. One of those objectives is to achieve "One CommonSpirit," by defining a unified culture, brand and operations, aligning approaches to increase efficiency and leverage scale.
As part of this initiative, CommonSpirit's South region will consolidate its EHR systems and transition to a single version of Epic, with the first "go-live" set for June 2025.
The multi-year plan, under the leadership of CommonSpirit CIO Daniel Barchi, aims to improve efficiency, streamline and reduce redundant technologies, generate economies of scale and strengthen system capabilities.
"The June 2025 go-live moves many of our South region hospitals and physician practices onto a common instance of Epic," according to the health system.
Last year, CommonSpirit transitioned 45 outpatient departments across five hospital markets in Utah to an Epic EHR system.