Evanston, Ill.-based Endeavor Health is in the midst of its largest IT endeavor to date.
The nine-hospital system is moving from three instances of Epic to one to streamline its EHR for patients and staff alike.
“Being on three different Epics doesn’t really make it easy to do process improvement, to create that consistent experience, because anything we do, we are building in three different versions,” Endeavor Health Chief Medical Informatics Officer Shilpan Patel, DO, told Becker’s.
The health system rebranded as Endeavor Health in late 2023 after forming a year earlier from the union of Evanston, Ill.-based NorthShore University HealthSystem and Warrenville, Ill.-based Edward-Elmhurst Health.
Mergers over the years had left the health system with three instances of Epic, so patients could have up to three MyChart patient portals and staff might have to log into different systems depending on their physical location. Endeavor Health spent 2024 planning and setting up a governance structure for the EHR consolidation before launching the project in early 2025. The organization intends to go live with the single Epic EHR in fall 2026.
The health system is expending resources as if it were a new EHR install, with dozens of work groups meeting weekly on the initiative. An emergency medicine work group, for instance, might include two emergency medicine physicians, an advanced practice provider, a nurse and a nurse manager. Endeavor Health is using Epic’s project management tool for the consolidation, and will end up with the company’s foundational EHR as its base.
“This is clinically and operationally led and supported or enabled by technology,” Dr. Patel said. “You really need to get a large number of people in a room together and then have them make the decisions, and really not just turn on a switch, but really understand: What does the switch do? What’s the impact of turning on the switch? How do we train toward that switch?”
Endeavor Health can currently share medical records throughout the system via Epic’s Care Everywhere feature but other tasks can be a challenge.
“Let’s take something like referral management or trying to do transition-of-care management across our platforms. You’d have to log into the three different instances to truly do that,” Dr. Patel said. “Currently, once that patient leaves the hospital and they go to the ambulatory office, that whole process for the physician, the type of note, the way the visits are set up, the work that’s done before the patient gets to the visit, that’s done in three different ways right now.”
Dr. Patel said this could be the largest IT project the health system ever embarks on. “The impact from this is really big,” he said. “In the healthcare industry, with our frontline staff, the burnout rates are increasing. So we have an opportunity to design a system to make it easy to do the right thing at the right time for every patient.”
The single instance of Epic will also make it easier for Endeavor Health to adopt new solutions, such as AI, that the EHR vendor is developing. “We’re leveraging this governance structure and this project to pilot as many of those tools as we can, evaluate them and figure out if they’re going to be helpful or meet our needs, and then try turning them on,” Dr. Patel said.
At the same time, the health system is consolidating its hardware and network infrastructure. “So it’s a pretty big project for IT,” Dr. Patel said. “That’s an understatement.”
But the benefits will be well worth it, he said: “If you can create some level of consistency or eliminate variation, then you can yield better outcomes. What we’re trying to do through this project is to create those consistent workflows that are going to set us up for the best outcomes possible.”
The health system, for instance, will be able to better evaluate whether it is scheduling appointments efficiently across the organization.
“The end game is to deliver on our mission, vision and values, our vision is to provide that safe, seamless and personal care to every patient, no matter which door you come through,” Dr. Patel said.
