When then-President George W. Bush mentioned EHRs in a televised speech in the early 2000s, Judy Faulkner was “flabbergasted,” she recalled.
“I remember jumping up and down in my seat, saying ‘How did he know about this?'” the Epic co-founder and CEO wrote in a May 5 blog post. “We had never spoken to him — how did the president learn about what we were doing?”
Epic, now the nation’s largest EHR vendor by hospital market share, was then still a small company.
It would be decades before Ms. Faulkner found out how President Bush discovered EHRs. She ran into former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, who told her he had given President Bush a list of important things about healthcare to help prepare for his speech.
“President Bush’s talk announcing EMRs to the world made a big difference in healthcare systems moving forward with EMRs,” Ms. Faulkner wrote. “It changed the country, which now knew what EMRs were, and it significantly helped EMRs to grow.”
