While Sarasota (Fla.) Memorial Health Care System plans to spend $160 million on a new Epic EHR over the next five years, the return on investment will include improved workflow efficiency, patient safety and clinician experience, the organization’s CIO told Becker’s.
The two-hospital, $2.1 billion public system plans to go live with Epic across the enterprise in October 2026 after starting the implementation in June of this year.
“In terms of what this means to the staff, and how they work, and our community — in terms of access and data and sharing information — I just don’t think you can put a price on it,” said Sarasota Memorial CIO Pam Ramhofer, who is cosponsoring the EHR project with the health system’s COO.
Sarasota Memorial has gone from “dragging people along” and teaching basic computer skills when it installed its first EHR in the late 1990s to today, when clinicians are pining for the new system, she said. Most physicians and many nurses train on Epic, so staffers were often disappointed to find out the organization had a different EHR — making the switch a recruitment advantage as well. “They’re pushing the technology to move faster and have more tools,” Ms. Ramhofer said. “So it’s very, very different.”
Some of those new capabilities will feature AI, like for ambient clinical documentation. “I think we’re the beneficiaries of coming in a little later in the game,” Ms. Ramhofer said. “So we’ll be standing [the EHR] up with all the latest and greatest as long as we’re doing those workflows that are AI-enabled.”
Sarasota Memorial plans to join Epic’s Cosmos research network, which includes anonymized data from over 300 million unique patient records. “The physicians are going to be thrilled to have access to that, as well as our research department and our medical residents,” Ms. Ramhofer said.
The health system has been eyeing a new EHR for about a decade after outgrowing its current platform. Sarasota Memorial will be able to consolidate three patient portals to one and retire nearly a quarter of its roughly 380 applications — a move expected to enhance cybersecurity by reducing its digital footprint.
Sarasota Memorial has about 1,000 staffers working on the project, including 30 new full-time employees hired specifically for Epic. The health system also brought on project management consultants.
“We try to use our own staff as much as possible, because there’s a lot of knowledge that’s gained when you build a system, and I don’t want that walking out the door,” Ms. Ramhofer said.
Software costs will be in line with what Sarasota Memorial is paying now, with the bulk of the investment going toward the implementation. The return won’t be measurable in hard dollars and cents but it’ll be there, including strengthened safety protocols, Ms. Ramhofer said.
“Every time we transfer a patient within the hospital, somebody has to document that transfer in three different applications. And from now on, it’s going to be either seamless or one,” she said. “There are going to be many, many efficiencies gained by reducing all those applications that people have to get into and go out of or search for data.”
Epic is the largest IT project in Ms. Ramhofer’s 40 years at the health system — and one of its biggest capital investments overall. “In terms of touching people, it’s No. 1, because about 80-90% of our staff is going to be touched by it somehow, as well as our entire community that uses our services,” she said.
“It’s been a long road, and we’re excited,” she added. “Going up with a big system, going ‘big bang‘ like this can be a little scary, and you do everything you can to mitigate anything unexpected. But we’ll get through it, and we’ll be all the better for it.”
