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Epic Implementation Problems Lead To Lower Hospital Credit Rating

Nov 07, 2013 09:15 am | By: Anne Zieger

Of late, stories have begun to crop up about troubled Epic implementations and the financial problems that these shaky implementations can cause. In fact, we’re aware of at least one Epic investment which may have led to the departure of a CIO from a Maine hospital.

Now, we’re told that a troubled Epic implementation has led to the lowering of a hospital’s credit rating. Standard & Poor’s has lowered Winston-Salem, NC-based Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s debt from AA- to A+, primarily due to the problems Wake Forest has had in rolling out Epic, according to Becker’s Hospital Review.

According to a statement from Wake Forest, the EMR implementation had a bigger impact on the hospital’s finances and operations than it had anticipated, leading to poorer overall fiscal performance than expected for 2013. Earlier this year, the CIO for Wake Forest resigned in the wake of the Epic debacle.

Wake Forest spent about $13.3 million to bring Epic on board, and roughly $8 million on Epic-related expenses, but that doesn’t seem to have been the main reason the install caused financial problems. We know from a report in the Winston-Salem Journal that since the Epic rollout, the hospital said that it had lost $26.6 million in margin due to volume disruption caused by Epic-related problems.

The Epic implementation wasn’t the only reason for the downgrade. It came partly due to cuts in NIH research funding, lower volume growth, a lower provider tax and sequestration cuts, according to hospital CFO and vice president for finance Edward Chadwick. But clearly, the disruptions caused by the Epic install have been major.

S&P did show Wake Forest some mercy, changing its financial outlook from “negative” to “stable.” The agency is predicting that the hospital should rebound financially in 2014 as the disruptive effect of the Epic install decreases.

http://www.hospitalemrandehr.com/2013/11/07/epic-implementation-problems-lead-to-lower-hospital-credit-rating/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HospitalEMRandEHR+%28Hospital+EMR+and+EHR%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail