Irving, Texas-based Christus Health is nearing the finish line of a transformation to unify its health system under a single EHR platform.
By March 2025, all core facilities within the organization will be fully integrated into Epic, with plans to onboard newly acquired facilities thereafter.
"We've had Epic in some capacity for over a decade, but we made an enterprise-wide decision to standardize on Epic three years ago," Sam Bagchi, MD, executive vice president and chief clinical officer at Christus Health told Becker's. "By March 1, 2025, we'll have completed implementation across all our core facilities, enabling us to unlock tremendous potential for improving care delivery."
Implementing an EHR across a large health system like Christus Health requires significant investment and organizational alignment. According to Dr. Bagchi, securing buy-in from both clinical staff and leadership was critical when moving onto a new EHR platform.
"We focused on engaging our physicians and clinicians in a two-way dialogue to ensure the technology supported their needs," Dr. Bagchi said. "Physicians increasingly view advanced, integrated technology as a differentiator when deciding where to practice. Having a consistent, user-friendly platform like Epic not only enhances recruitment but also improves care quality and safety."
The organization also worked to educate its board and executive team on how a unified EHR system could expedite the implementation of evidence-based best practices and streamline operations.
"For example, when we identify a clinical best practice, the time to value for rolling it out systemwide is much faster with a single platform," Dr. Bagchi said.
With outpatient clinics already fully transitioned to Epic, Christus Health is seeing early returns on its investment. Tools like Epic's MyChart are empowering patients to manage their health information, schedule appointments, and communicate with providers.
"This is a game-changer for patient engagement," Dr. Bagchi said. "Better integration with pharmacies, transparency in care, and instant access to health records give patients greater control over their health journeys."
Clinicians, too, are benefiting from advanced features that reduce administrative burden and improve the quality of care. One initiative is Christus Health's deployment of AI-powered ambient documentation tools, which transcribe physician-patient conversations in real time, streamlining note-taking and fostering more meaningful patient interactions.
"Our physicians can now complete, review, and sign notes immediately after an encounter, ensuring the patient has timely access to their records while reducing follow-up tasks," Dr. Bagchi said. "It's also brought back the humanistic component of caregiving, allowing physicians to focus more on their patients and less on their keyboards."
Once the full Epic implementation is complete, Christus Health plans to leverage the EHR platform's capabilities to advance new care delivery models and harness AI for early detection and intervention.
"For instance, we're using Epic tools to monitor patients with high-risk conditions, like pulmonary nodules that could indicate early-stage lung cancer," Dr. Bagchi said. "With a unified platform, we can integrate care across primary care, pulmonology, radiology, and surgery to ensure timely and life-saving interventions."
With the health system modernizing its existing Epic platform to create an enterprise-wide instance, the organization was able to ensure consistency and scalability across its facilities.
"When health systems run on different configurations, they lose the scalability and efficiency that a single, standardized platform offers," Dr. Bagchi said. "Modernizing our implementation early on was a challenging but worthwhile step that's now paying dividends."