Nicklaus Children’s Health System is putting a number on its Epic rollout, and its president and CEO wants people to understand what that number is actually for.
Matthew A. Love, president and CEO of the Miami-based health system, told Becker’s the project is expected to cost about $75 million once training, software and implementation fees are added up. But in his account, the price tag has less to do with replacing an electronic health record and more to do with funding the health system’s broader expansion.
“Right now, we’re estimating about $75 million, and that covers everything from the training costs to the software to the implementation fees,” Mr. Love said. “In terms of how we look at capital and these big expenditures, that’s part of our normal capital planning process. We think of things in buckets like clinical equipment, infrastructure and then strategic dollars that are the bigger projects, typically over multiple years.”
Those strategic dollars, he said, are the same pool funding the initiatives the health system needs to grow and strengthen itself over time, rather than a separate line item carved out just for technology.
Nicklaus Children’s has run on what was formerly known as Cerner, now Oracle Health’s EHR platform, for more than a decade, among the earlier adopters of that system. Epic will replace it, along with the bolt-on systems many hospitals accumulate over the years, covering everything from scheduling to the patient portal. The rollout would touch more than 5,000 physicians, nurses and staff across the health system’s three hospital campuses and its outpatient network, with completion targeted for 2027.
Rather than phase the rollout by hospital or department, Nicklaus Children’s chose a single go-live date after weighing the organization’s bandwidth and consulting with peers who had already made the switch.
“Come May 1 of 2027, the entire organization will be live on Epic,” Mr. Love said. “That’s primarily focused around how do we make sure we maintain that clinical enterprise, that clinical integration, keeping our patients and our families at the forefront of our thought process. One medical record, one place of truth is really the driving factor around trying to go through this big bang.”
Mr. Love said South Florida’s broader shift toward Epic among multiple health systems in the region adds another benefit: faster exchange of records when a patient shows up at an emergency department that isn’t their usual one.
Training will run across online, remote and in-person channels, and every employee will need to complete it before gaining access to the new system. Mr. Love said the transition carries less risk than a typical EHR overhaul because staff are not moving from paper to electronic records, only from one electronic system to another, and many new hires already have Epic experience from nursing school or residency programs elsewhere.
But the clearest articulation of what the investment is for, in Mr. Love’s telling, is not a KPI. It’s a transfer.
Mr. Love’s example involves a transfer out of the neonatal intensive care unit. When a child is seen at the system’s Fort Lauderdale or Coral Springs hospital and needs the higher level of care available at the Miami flagship, that record will now move with the patient instead of being recreated by hand at the next stop.
“In the middle of the night, when that baby needs to be transferred out of the NICU at 2 a.m., the electronic health record will be seamless,” Mr. Love said. “To me, that is a huge component and a drive for what we do as we continue to grow.”
It’s the story Mr. Love said he has shared directly with the health system’s board of governors to explain why a $75 million number is worth approving.
“A $75 million investment is a big number, but this is as much about supporting our growth that we’ve been experiencing over the last year and will continue over the next couple years,” Mr. Love said.
Mr. Love said the organizations’ CIO Michelle Hurtarte has taken ownership of the project and that he has no concerns about hitting the May 1 target on budget and on time.
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