The CIO of Washington, D.C.-based Children’s National Hospital is eager to move to Epic as the organization awaits better revenue cycle and patient experience capabilities.
The pediatric health system said in June it would transition to the new EHR by mid-2027.
Matt MacVey, executive vice president and CIO of Children’s National Hospital, told Becker’s the organization can’t switch to Epic “fast enough.” He is looking forward to improved patient and family experience, revenue cycle and AI tools. Besides the EHR swap, Children’s National is also establishing a new data and AI platform and shifting to Workday for enterprise resource planning.
“We’re going to touch every single business process and clinical process and care delivery process in the organization,” Mr. MacVey said.
He said he values Epic’s “partner” mindset, working “shoulder to shoulder” with health systems to refine processes. He also anticipates enhanced interoperability, a critical factor when Children’s National serves complex pediatric patients from around the globe.
In addition, the $2.2 billion health system plans to participate in Epic’s Cosmos research network that includes clinical insights from over 300 million patients.
“We do a lot of work in rare disease at Children’s National and when you’re talking about small [numbers] of patients who have very unique circumstances, our ability to identify like patients across the nation or world and reach out to those care providers and consult with them … is incredible,” he said. “It’s beyond patient record interoperability. It’s bringing a whole nother level of application of data to the improvement of health outcomes.”
Children’s National is kicking off its Epic implementation in January, with a planned 18-month timeline. The health system intends to adopt “virtually all” of the EHR’s features, including AI, Mr. MacVey said (Children’s National currently uses Microsoft’s Dragon Copilot scribe).
“I’m not sure this prediction will fully hold, but based on what I’m seeing and hearing, in two years we’d like for our nursing folks to be almost completely mobile and rarely have to touch a keyboard,” he said. “It’s such an ideal time for us to do this work. But it’s evolving so fast, so it really puts the onus on having a strong project plan and execution and, of course, change management, because this will be a significant change for all of our staff.”
The core Epic team consists of about 160 Children’s National employees, with 400-plus on the larger governance and decision-making body. That includes clinical, operational and revenue cycle leaders, as well as frontline staff.
Mr. MacVey also acknowledges peer market pressure to migrate to Epic. Children’s National is one of only two of U.S. News & World Report‘s top 10 pediatric hospitals that don’t use the EHR vendor (Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, also on Oracle Health, is the other).
“Seeing other organizations be successful was certainly a factor as well in our decision-making process,” Mr. MacVey said.
Declining to get into specific figures, Mr. MacVey said Epic is “probably the most significant investment” Children’s National has made in technology. The primary business case is stronger revenue cycle management, more tightly integrated into clinical workflows, with elevated billing and collections as well. He expects the health system to recoup its upfront investment in about five years.
“We’ll come out of it an organization that can adapt to change better and grow faster, in my view,” he said. “So I’m really excited about that.”
