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Check them out at this week. health.com/panda. All right. Let's see. Hey, this. If you want a run down of what went on at epic UGM hit our website this week. health.com/news. There are a plethora of stories. You can get the complete list. I'm not going to go through the complete list. I'm going to talk about my takeaways. Which is going to be a little different than just the list of things that they rolled out. So check it out on the new site.

Let me know what you think. Finally share this podcast with a friend or colleague use it as foundation for daily or weekly discussions on the topics that are relevant to you in the industry. A form of mentoring. They can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. Epic UGM is probably one of the most effective conferences in the industry. And I think it's. That because it's an extension of the culture of epic and the epic culture is a really one that should be replicated while I find it.

Interesting that a couple of things I find interesting. One is. If you ask any epic customer. Almost any, I can't, I have yet to ask one this question and not get the same answer who their best vendor is. Now keep in mind, they probably have it depending on the size of the healthcare organization, a hundred. A thousand different vendor partners. You don't have to say which one is the best and they may have issues with what Epic's doing and epic.

They may have a struggle right now, or the implementation might be going in a difficult direction whatever challenge they have with epic, they will all answer that my best vendor partner. By a long shot is epic. And I think that in and of itself should be studied. Like we should step back and say, why is that?

How have they consistently been able to do that? I've talked about that on previous shows, I believe. That is an extension of the person of Judy Faulkner. Judy Faulkner has gotten this. This a mythical kind of personality, but what makes Judy, Judy is she cares. She cares for not only the industry at a high level and not only is she using the words, she does care.

She responds to emails. She responds to individual CEOs. She responds to. Concerns. I've had people say to me, I, I brought this up to Judy and they actually changed the way they go about working with their clients. Based on a comment I made in a meeting. They listen, they change.

They do immersion of their new employees in healthcare settings to understand health care at a deep level. It's those kinds of things. They assign a BFF best friend forever. Somebody asked me like, BFF, what does that mean? I'm like, I think he told him means it's just odd to be used in this context.

And sure enough, they were like, wow, that's interesting. So that's the person that is your advocate. They are your ambassador and your advocate. They're the ambassador for epic to you. And they're the advocate. Back to epic for you on your behalf. And it's a it's a great model. That's so what they have done and people look at it and they go, oh, they have so much money.

They didn't at one time they did not. And they were still able to keep progressing. And I think it's when you have a CEO, who's responding personally to those emails. When you have a CEO that's personally involved. In the decisions on product and prioritization and all those things you might say, wow, how are they able to move forward? As quickly as they are with Judy being at the center of so many things, I think she's at the center of less and more of the high priority items in the. Strategic items are. Her purview. But and I think you could also say they haven't slowed down because of that. That sort of mindset. Sometimes they do not respond as quickly as we would like.

And there's, a couple of cases in point. And one of those I'm going to talk about today. So we should replicate that culture. If you're a vendor partner listening to this, study them, you could be annoyed with them. You could be jealous of them, all those things. You should still study them and try to figure out what do they do?

How do they approach the client? Why does my client. I think they are the best partner that they deal with. . Anyway, you get the picture.

I'm going overboard on that. Of my takeaways is the fact that Judy stood up there. And. Is she uses language. Effectively.

I like the way she uses language, like she labeled. Those that are building their own portals as yoyo. You're on your own. In other words, Epic has a set of tools. We will enable you to do these things, but don't call us. You're on your own. And so labeling it as you're on your own and Jojo, she was able to say for those of you who are doing yo-yo projects, And you get the connotation,

it's sorta just says itself. When you say your yo-yo projects and your yo-yo implementations and your yo-yo interactions with your clients and that kind of stuff, it sounds like. You're screwing around with what it was meant to be. Now in fairness to those that who went out and built yo-yo projects as because Epic's tool. Could not do something. I don't know what it was at the time, but it could not do something, which is the reason they went out and did it.

It didn't knit together, all the different services they wanted to offer in the market. It, they couldn't make a change. I did hear this. During the pandemic, they could not make a change. To the to the portal, I guess that's what we're calling it to my chart that was critical during the pandemic.

And so they were like, We have no choice. Like we have to do something here. And so they went in another direction. They all went in another direction for a good reason. And if, and I can guarantee you if epic had offered it. They would have used what epic offered. So at some point there was a deficiency. In my chart. Which is the reason they went in that direction.

But what Judy got up on stage this time around and said, essentially is we're now passing you. Like we may have been behind, but we're now passing you and we are now advancing and your clients have an expectation. And when they go from one house into another. There they expect the level of service that we're going to be able to provide. I don't think you're going to, she didn't say, I don't think she said you are not going to be able to keep up with us. We are putting a lot of resources towards this. And we have a lot of developers.

We have a lot of product managers. We have a lot of people listening to the client. We are developing new capabilities. We are integrating into different things. You're not going to be able to keep up with us. You can continue to do your yo-yo projects. That's entirely up to you, but you should get on board. And she has done this several times.

In fact, I would say probably once a year, she will stand up there and say, It's time for you to get on board. You should refuel. You should get on foundation. You should. Do these things. And it's really interesting because it is.

It's. It's bold. It's bold because you see ego coming up against the ego. Because it's, these health system leaders have fairly sizable egos, and then you have Judy, who's standing up there and saying, you know what? I'm right. I know what I'm doing. It's time for you to get on board and it'll start with that comment.

And then to be honest with you, it'll get baked into the money. It'll get baked into the stars program. It'll get baked into the the honor roll program, it'll get baked into something and then , she will pull people in a direction. Now, I don't think there's anybody in the industry, pulling people in the direction that healthcare needs to go more than epic. I think Judy is the architect of where she would like this go.

Now, let me tell you some of the other things I saw. Again, I'm not an epic apologist. I was never an epic client. To be honest, my. Yeah, so enough said. The thing I find impressive. With epic now is their expansion where they're going. So you have the epic payer platform and it's where it is.

You have a cosmos and. Patients like mine and so forth and so on. They're expanding that again, not huge amount of usage at this point, but it's expanding, it's going, it has amazing potential. So you have cosmos, you have the payer platform. You have blood bank they're heading in the blood bank direction.

That can't make people too happy if you're, especially if you're in that business, but they're heading in that direction. There I'm trying to think some of the other things, essentially they're a CRM light call center type capabilities. Are coming online. There's a couple of times they were announcing things.

They were talking about things I'm sitting there going okay. That, that already exists. That's another product that's out in the market that already exists. That's another product that's out in the market, but they're now developing and seemingly we'll have tighter integration and better. Things to move forward. And and international as well.

So epic is expanding. They are reaching out and, you just take the payer platform. For example, the friction between payers and providers. With regard to the patient experience with regard to billing, with regard to prior authorizations, you name it. If that gets integrated into a single system or even into a, of. A set of workflows. That is integrated into the clinicians daily workflow. You're going to see significant gains. And this is every time I talk about architecture. I say, in too many areas in healthcare we try to stitch things together that were never meant to be stitched together. Where that doesn't happen is when you have an actual architect.

I think Judy is that architect. And her team, obviously. But I think she has that architect. I think she has that vision for, Hey, this is a problem. We can fix this. We are going to step into this area. And we can all argue, should epic be stepping into this area or that area. And what about the people who already have products in those areas and whatnot? But healthcare in general benefits, when you have an architect, when you have somebody who sees the vision and it's purposely building things in a direction, Again, I'm not an epic apologist. But I will say that I see a lot of foundational items coming together. That is going to finally deliver on the promise. Of what technology and the EHR was meant to do in healthcare.

Plus I think. I think the federal government is doing HHS and others are doing really good things around interoperability. Which is bringing all these things together as well. So I think we're smoothing around the edges and we're creating. The ability to deliver on the promise of technology.

So those are my takeaways from epic. Yes. They talked a lot about AI. They released a lot of really interesting stuff and they will do that every year. But I think what's more interesting is the direction that they set for the industry, the expectations they set for not only the. Health systems, but now payers. And even patients, to some extent they are setting a new level of expectation of, I have this experience with one health system.

I want to have this experience with another and their influence and reach in the industry. Is a pretty impressive if I can garner an invite next year, I think we would love to be a part of XGM and UGM. To keep an eye on what things are happening and to keep up our conversations with you all on how you are implementing it. I will say this. They showed a lot of stuff.

And the most common refrain I heard from people was, I don't know how we're going to keep up. There's an awful lot of stuff coming down the pike. So we'll talk about that some more as well. That's all for today. Don't forget. Share this podcast with a friend or colleague. And we want to thank Panda health who is investing in our mission to develop the next generation of 📍 health leaders.

Check them out today at this week. health.com/panda. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.