Banner Health has announced plans to scrap Epic’s $115 million EHR system at its two Tucson hospitals that went live in 2013 and will replace the system with Cerner’s EHR platform, according to the Arizona Daily Star. The two hospitals — Banner-University Medical Center Tucson and Banner-University Medical Center South was apart of the former University of Arizona Health Network that was acquired by Banner Health March 1.
Currently all of Banner Health’s 28 hospitals are already live on Cerner’s EHR and Tucson Banner hospitals is expected to transition to Cerner by early 2018. Official are still evaluating the costs of converting to Cerner.
Reasons for Scraping Epic’s EHR System
Banner Health stated the investment in Epic was so expensive that the UA Health Network reported operating losses in its 2014 fiscal year, including $32 million in unbudgeted costs. Additional costs were primarily attributed to the go-live delays and funding additional training and support that was originally scheduled for September 1; however, the Epic EHR system was not fully operational until November 1. According to a April 2014 financial report from the UA Board of Directors, physician training attributed to a $6.8 million loss as a result of physicians not seeing as many patients.
“Obviously there was pain and suffering. But the good news is that there’s enough similarity between the two. It is much more difficult to go from non-electronic to electronic than from one electronic system to another. Having all Banner clinical enterprises on a single platform is better for patients and medical providers, and ultimately will also be cost-effective,” said former board chair Steve Lynn.
