Providence, R.I.-based Care New England went live with its Epic EHR system Oct. 4, relying on an outsourced IT workforce to support the transition.
In 2023, the health system transferred nearly 160 IT employees to IBM spinoff Kyndryl, and that team played a central role in the Epic implementation. According to CIO Tomas Gregorio, this marked the first Epic project undertaken by the health system’s outsourcing partner.
“We worked so closely that it felt like one Care New England IT team, instead of working with an outsourcer,” Mr. Gregorio told Becker’s.
As a result of the health system’s outsourcer not having specific Epic experience, Care New England’s internal management team was deeply involved, providing continuous oversight and additional resources.
“Epic has a playbook you follow, and they never followed it before,” Mr. Gregorio said. “They had to hire staff with prior Epic experience — lots of consultants — and they leaned on us a lot to help them through it. They did a good job adapting and working with me and my team to get through the journey. It was tough, but we got through it and were incredibly successful.”
That success showed up quickly. Care New England stabilized its Epic environment far faster than is typical for a system of its size, Mr. Gregorio said, resolving 88% of the 12,000 support tickets generated between go-live and the present.
The health system also saw strong user adoption and even closed the month in a positive revenue position. That outcome is particularly significant, he noted, because only about 1% of Epic implementations nationwide are revenue-neutral, and Care New England came very close to that benchmark.
“One of the biggest problems Epic implementations have is that when you go live, you find things missed or built improperly, resulting in downstream revenue cycle problems and work queues get backed up. You need to plan ahead to work those queues, and work very closely with revenue cycle leadership,” Mr. Gregorio said. “Post live and throughout the stabilization phase, it’s a high priority to get claims out fast and clean. You lose a lot of revenue in those early weeks if you don’t plan properly. Our revenue cycle leadership put together a well-coordinated off-ramp from our previous system so we could maintain the level of revenue we needed for the next few months while we transitioned fully to Epic.”
Mr. Gregorio credits the outsourcer for listening to the guidance of both his management team and him to accommodate that Epic knowledge gap, stating that willingness to adapt was critical to the success the health system is seeing post go-live.
“You need a strong group of leaders who can manage the outsourcer. I built an executive team that helps provide strategic guidance and direction, and then we monitor closely,” he said. “The most important part of this outsourcing model: having the right people managing the contract and the work being performed daily.”
