Forbes had an interesting article this week – An Interview with the Most Powerful Woman in Health Care. The woman is Judy Faulkner, CEO of Epic Systems. According to KLAS’ 2012 Best in KLAS Report, Epic was rated as the #1 Overall Software Vendor, #1 Overall Software Suite, and #1 Overall Physician Practice Vendor based on 25 separate performance measures. Per the Forbes article which you can read here
Judy Faulkner might not be a household name yet, but in the health care industry, she’s simply known as Judy. She is the founder and chief executive officer of Epic Systems, a privately-held $1.5 billion (2012 revenue) company that sells electronic health records—a position that makes her one of the few self-made women on the Forbes billionaires list. Her customers are top medical centers, such as Cleveland Clinic, Geisinger Health System, and Johns Hopkins. She wields enormous influence. Almost half of the U.S. population will have its medical information stored in Epic digital records when hospitals finish installing them.
Faulkner, rarely, if ever, grants interviews. A year ago when I profiled her, she refused to speak. Because Epic shuns publicity and press releases, it is perceived as aloof; and criticism leveled at Epic regarding its business strategy is rarely challenged by the company.
Judy Faulkner goes on to share how she was an undergrad math major, and a grad student in computer science and wrote the original Epic software. She then covers some of the criticism that Epic receives.
Forbes: Many things are said about Epic by competitors, but also by customers. One of them is that Epic is a closed system: it’s difficult to exchange patient information with other electronic health records; it’s hard for third-party vendors to integrate with Epic, and the technology is old. Is this totally wrong?
Faulkner: Totally wrong. You have to understand that Epic was originally written as a database management system. One of the things that made Epic strong when I wrote the original code was that it never occurred to me to do anything other than put the patient at the center. I developed a clinical system at a time when the health care world had pretty much only billing and lab systems available. We put in exit after exit (openings in the source code) so that people wouldn’t find the system closed. We give the source code to our customers so they can use these programming exits to write their own code. For example, one customer put something in there that asks the check-in person to smile if it’s a new patient. They have the source code and we train them to make those changes. It’s not easy, because it’s complex software, but it’s probably easier than many other systems because of all the exits.
Forbes: Do you still use MUMPS? (A programming language developed at Massachusetts General Hospital in the late 1960s).
Faulkner: The language is not MUMPS, it’s Caché, which is the modern, up-to-date successor (see this story). Caché has won many contests for best database performance. It needs to run fast so clinicians can work quickly. We are the most open system I know because we’re built as a database management system, and database management systems need to allow their users to mold it to what they need. We interface with speech recognition, imaging, medical devices, lab, patient education content, user authentication, and hundreds of different vendor systems. If you ask them, many will say that Epic is one of the easiest systems to interface with because we do a very good job of utilizing standards. In 2007, KLAS (a health IT research firm) told us that Epic had the highest score for doing interfacing well.
Forbes: So, it’s easy for technology companies to integrate with your system?
Faulkner: We get hundreds of requests a month, we can’t work with everybody.
Forbes: What’s your policy?
Faulkner: Because we get so many requests, our policy is that we work with the vendors that our customers tell us they want to work with.
The Perficient team often receives requests from clients to gain access to Epic data. Many of these clients have a significant investment in Microsoft technologies. Our team has helped several clients gain access to Epic data via Microsoft’s SQL Server and SharePoint products. You can learn more about two of these clients and the cost saving that unlocking Epic data drove in the videos below.
