Pittsburgh-based UPMC is in the midst of one of the largest EHR consolidations in the country, moving its vast network of hospitals and care sites onto a single Epic instance. Health system leaders say the shift will shape how the system delivers care and deploys new technologies for years to come.
For Robert Bart, MD, UPMC’s chief medical information officer, the effort is more than an IT upgrade. It is a strategic move to unify clinical operations, simplify the patient experience and create the digital foundation needed to scale AI across the organization.
UPMC has grown through mergers and acquisitions, leaving the system with multiple EHR platforms across its footprint. Three years ago, leaders decided it was time to change that.
“Coming out of the pandemic, we made a decision that it was time to take this multiple EHR environment that we inherited or created through acquisition and move everything to a single EHR instance,” Dr. Bart said.
UPMC selected Epic and began the transition in phases. In September, about 40% of the organization moved onto the unified platform. According to Dr. Bart, that conversion was historic in scale.
“The conversion we did was, by Epic’s standards of how they count, it was the single-largest conversion that they’ve ever supported in the history of Epic,” he said.
The remaining 60% of the system is scheduled to convert this spring. The effort is about more than technology consolidation, Dr. Bart said.
One immediate benefit is simplification for patients, who will now have a single portal across UPMC’s network instead of navigating different systems depending on where they receive care.
At the same time, clinicians gain a consistent environment that supports systemwide care delivery standards.
“We really work on standardizing the process and quality of care that UPMC is delivering across all of our geographic footprint,” Dr. Bart said, noting standardization does not mean lowering quality. “I don’t think standardization needs to necessarily be mediocre. I also don’t think standardization needs to stand in the way of innovation.”
The unification also positions UPMC to deploy emerging technologies at scale, particularly AI tools increasingly used to support clinical workflows.
In a fragmented EHR environment, Dr. Bart said, the health system would have needed to implement multiple AI solutions across different platforms, creating inefficiencies and inconsistent experiences. A single EHR foundation allows the organization to adopt new capabilities systemwide.
“In a sense, creating a whole new foundation really prepares UPMC, I think, for at least the next couple decades of healthcare technology advances,” he said.
Still, the transition has not been without lessons.
One unexpected challenge came from parts of UPMC that were already on Epic but needed to move to the new unified platform. While switching from one vendor to another signals obvious change to clinicians, Epic-to-Epic transitions proved more disruptive than expected.
“The login looks the same, but the order sets you used to use might not be there,” Dr. Bart said. “There’s subtle differences that make it a harder threshold or barrier to overcome.”
UPMC is now focusing heavily on change management and clinician education ahead of the next conversion wave to minimize disruption.
Beyond operational alignment, the Epic platform also supports innovation efforts across the system. UPMC’s enterprise innovation arm works alongside clinicians to develop and scale solutions across care settings, an advantage Dr. Bart said few systems can match.
“We have all of that under one roof,” he said, referencing UPMC’s combination of academic centers, community hospitals and outpatient facilities. “It allows us to think about doing these things at a broader scale.”
That scale becomes increasingly important as health systems face workforce shortages and financial pressure. Technologies such as ambient AI documentation tools have already reduced after-hours charting for clinicians at UPMC, helping consolidate documentation into the clinic day and improving provider satisfaction. Some clinicians have even chosen to see additional patients as a result, improving access to care.
Even so, Dr. Bart emphasized technology investments must balance financial returns with broader organizational value.
“There’s this balance between improving the goal of what UPMC is trying to do, which is high-quality care, and optimizing the investment in technology,” he said.
As the Epic unification nears completion, Dr. Bart sees it as the groundwork for what comes next: Using unified data and digital infrastructure to drive innovation in care delivery.
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