New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health has moved about 70,000 users onto Epic as it pushes toward the next phase of its $1.2 billion enterprise EHR overhaul, COO Kevin Beiner told Becker’s.
Northwell will bring its next wave of hospitals onto the platform in November, leaving a handful of facilities still to convert as the 28-hospital system works to consolidate more than 30 legacy EHR platforms onto a single instance of Epic.
70,000 users in, one wave to go
The rollout is Northwell’s largest health IT undertaking to date.
The health system’s first major go-live came Nov. 1, 2025, covering hospitals and ambulatory sites in its Western Region, including Westchester, Manhattan and Staten Island. Its second wave, spanning nine hospitals in the Central Region on Long Island, followed and was billed as one of Epic’s largest implementations to date, touching roughly 42,000 users and more than $8 billion in revenue.
“It’s basically ripping out the EHR and our backend revenue cycle processes — essentially the central nervous system — and installing this new Epic platform across the organization,” Northwell CFO Michele Cusack said during an episode of the “Becker’s CFO and Revenue Cycle Podcast.” “We’re really excited about all the efficiencies that’s going to come from a single platform — not just for our team members, but for our patients as well.”
Mr. Beiner said the conversion to Epic is going well, with about 70,000 users transitioned from legacy systems and another implementation wave planned for November. He said Northwell is already seeing benefits from the platform.
“We’re already starting to see some of the improved functionality in terms of patient safety, efficiencies and patient satisfaction,” he said. “Those of us that use MyChart are very happy with it, and it really teases out what we can do better in terms of expanding access.”
Making a massive system feel small
Northwell announced the shift from Allscripts to Epic in March 2023. Once complete, the single-instance platform will unify a system that spans 28 hospitals and 1,000 ambulatory access points.
Asked what he’s most looking forward to once the rollout is finished, Mr. Beiner pointed to the scale of the challenge, not a finish line.
“There’s no such thing as ‘there’ when you get there,” he said. “It’s about taking an enterprise of 28 hospitals and 1,000 ambulatory access points and being able to treat them as one cohesive, integrated [unit] that feels very personalized to every patient.”
Northwell is growing at a rapid clip — merging last year with Danbury, Conn.-based Nuvance Health — and is now a $25 billion organization with 108,000 employees. It is also expanding into new states, such as Pennsylvania.
However, Mr. Beiner said the goal of the Epic investment is to keep that scale invisible to the patient in the exam room.
“The patient shouldn’t feel what I feel,” he said. “For the patient, it’s about the high-quality care they receive, and the EHR and a lot of the other technologies enables us to provide that to them. I want to make sure we can always make the big feel small. Epic helps us with that.”
Betting on scale as the rollout enters its final stretch
Northwell’s build-out is part of a broader push among the country’s largest health systems to standardize on a single Epic instance, a strategy also underway at systems like Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health and Chicago-based CommonSpirit, which are nearing the end of their own multiyear rollouts. For systems this size, the pitch is the same: fewer platforms means fewer breakdowns in care coordination, cleaner data and, eventually, lower long-term IT costs.
Mr. Beiner said Northwell isn’t approaching the final stretch without acknowledging the work still ahead.
“I love to project the optimism and the winning nature of the Northwell strategy,” he said. “Yes, there are challenges out there, but that’s where we’ve thrived historically.”
With one more wave scheduled for November and only a handful of hospitals left to convert, Northwell is closing in on a fully unified Epic instance, a milestone few systems Northwell’s size have reached.
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