Valhalla, N.Y.-based Westchester Medical Center Health Network is in the middle of an Epic EHR implementation that’s expected to do more than unify patient records — it will eliminate 88 separate software applications the health system has accumulated over years of growth.
“Epic actually is going to be displacing 88 applications when we’re done with our implementation and we retire those applications,” Leo Bodden, senior vice president and CIO of WMCHealth, told Becker’s. “Towards the tail end of 2028, our Epic cost will be significantly lower than our current costs.”
WMCHealth long operated as a federation of hospitals, and — as is common for systems that grow over time — that structure left the nine-hospital network running multiple, disconnected EHRs, Mr. Bodden said. Some facilities use Oracle Health’s platform, formerly known as Cerner, while others run Altera’s Paragon system, formerly Allscripts. A separate, smaller platform handles one of WMCHealth’s skilled nursing facilities.
The scale of that cleanup is part of why New York’s $2.6 billion Health Care Safety Net Transformation Program was so critical to the project, Mr. Bodden said. Stabilizing the organization’s technology was the priority for the next two years, and reaching that point was only possible with the state’s support. Once WMCHealth gets to the other side, Mr. Bodden said, its costs will be significantly lower than what the health system spends today running the multitude of applications Epic is displacing.
The EHR consolidation isn’t happening in isolation. WMCHealth is also in the midst of a systemwide Workday enterprise resource planning rollout, tackling the same kind of fragmentation on the finance, human resources and supply chain sides of the business. That project started in late 2025, with phase one expected to go live April 1, 2027.
Mr. Bodden declined to disclose the price tag of the Epic project or a specific return-on-investment figure. Minot, N.D.-based Trinity Health, for example, has said it expects its Epic implementation to generate nearly $1 billion in ROI, with a significant share of the savings tied to shrinking the three-hospital system’s application portfolio from more than 400 down to fewer than 200.
WMCHealth’s Epic go-live is set for Dec. 4, 2027, about 20 months after the project’s April 15, 2026, kickoff. By the time it’s complete, Mr. Bodden said, the network expects to have shed the bulk of the technical debt built up across its hospitals.
