New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health has completed a major scheduling conversion ahead of its Nov. 7 Epic go-live, which will encompass four hospitals and 538 ambulatory sites.
The milestone, known as future encounter conversion, was completed Oct. 16 and 17 as part of the third wave of Northwell’s Epic rollout, Kristin Myers, executive vice president and chief digital officer, told Becker’s.
The third wave includes South Oaks Hospital in Amityville, N.Y., South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore, N.Y., Huntington (N.Y.) Hospital and Mather Hospital in Port Jefferson, N.Y., along with 538 ambulatory sites.
Future encounter conversion involves electronically or manually transferring upcoming appointments from legacy scheduling systems into Epic. Ms. Myers confirmed that the appointments were successfully transferred.
Northwell began a “soft go-live” Oct. 19, during which staff started using Epic to schedule appointments occurring on or after Nov. 7. Appointments scheduled for dates before Nov. 7 will continue to be entered into legacy systems.
The approach requires scheduling staff to work across two systems during the transition period. The full go-live is scheduled for Nov. 7, when all users involved in the implementation will begin using Epic, Ms. Myers said.
Patients will not yet see changes during the soft go-live, but staff responsible for patient registration have begun using Epic for appointments occurring on or after Nov. 7, according to Ms. Myers.
“As we prepare for our third wave of Epic implementation, we continue to advance our vision of a more connected, standardized and digitally enabled health system,” Ms. Myers said. “Ultimately, this transformation is about equipping our clinicians with better tools, improving the patient experience, and delivering more seamless, coordinated care across Northwell.”
The milestone is part of Northwell’s $1.2 billion Epic implementation, a multiyear effort to consolidate more than 30 legacy EHR platforms across its 28 hospitals and hundreds of ambulatory locations.
Northwell completed its first major Epic go-live in November 2025. Its second wave, in May 2026, included nine hospitals and approximately 42,000 users.
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