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  Today in Health it, this story is Louisiana Hospital skirt's $200 million Epic EHR implementation by seeking a partner. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this Weekend Health it a channel dedicated to keeping Health IT staff current. And engaged. Today is Thursday and at 1:00 PM today I'm doing a webinar on the state of health it.

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Alright, here's today's story. This comes from Becker's hospital review.com. Louisiana Hospital skirts $200 million. EPIC EHR implementation by seeking affiliation. And here are some excerpts, rather than making a multimillion dollar investment to deploy a new EHR Women's Hospital. Is seeking a potential health system partner that instead would let the Baton Rouge, Louisiana based Hospital Connect

Their epic system. According to the Greater Baton Rouge business report, women's Hospital issued an information request in June, seeking proposals for an affiliation from national and local providers. Four hospital systems in Louisiana have submitted responses. Women's Hospital, CEO, Barbara Griffith, MD told the publication July 13th.

Dr. Griffith said Women's Hospital is looking F at potential affiliation partners to understand who would want to share their Epic EHR system and which organization would be the best cultural fit for a partnership. Women's hospital, which has 165 beds, looked into buying access to Epic, but ultimately chose not to because.

The project would've been too expensive, costing 200 million over the next seven years. According to the report, women's Hospital is not looking for a buyer, just a partner to help invest in new technologies. The hospital said in hopes to make a decision for the affiliation during the third quarter of this year.

Interesting story, right? What's my so what on this? Well, a couple things. One is a lot of things can go wrong in this affiliation, and it's important to note those things. And to be upfront about it when you go onto someone else's . Epic EHR system. You are essentially renting. You are a renter, you are not a buyer, so you are going to be beholden to the rules of the landlord of that system and their definitions and those kind of things.

You can try to negotiate in what you want to negotiate in, but at the end of the day, you're gonna be running on somebody else's multi-billion dollar health system, epic, EHR implementation, and they make the rules. That is just the way it is. And, uh, a lot of people have tried to get around that. It's just very difficult to do.

I will say this though, I, I'm surprised this does not happen more often, and I think it will happen more often. I think the smaller health systems are going to have to rely on larger health systems or partnerships in order to keep up with the technology demands that exist today in healthcare. I think the EHR is one of those areas.

I think the ERP systems are also expensive. But I think the one that is really coming on quickly is cybersecurity and the cost of doing cybersecurity right might be too much for some of the smaller health systems. So keep an eye on this. If you are one of those smaller health systems that's looking at this, partnerships is a way to go.

You just have to read the fine print, you have to select the right partners, just like any other partnership, you have to go through that with your eyes wide open. If you are some of these larger health systems, this is a great way to extend the reach of your health system. Through technology partnerships, there are defacto partnerships that have existed for years because of technology affiliations.

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