Epic’s UGM (User) Conference: Insights, Perspectives, and the Experience

August 26, 2021
John Lynn
8 Min Read

Still on my bucket list of conferences to attend is the Epic UGM (User Group Meeting) they hold every year for Epic users.  I love user conferences because you hear about the true realities users face.  Plus, there’s a common bond on the same application that makes finding someone who shares your challenges easy.

As was announced back in June, Epic was set on holding their UGM meeting in person in Verona, Wisconsin this week.  During this event, Epic users basically take over both Verona and nearby Madison and even then sometimes have to drive further away to get a hotel.  Judy had made it clear that she felt in-person was the way to really get things done.  That was true for employees at their office and for their Epic user conference.

A number of people have been tweeting from the event.  So, here’s a roundup of some of the interesting tweets people shared.

Epic calls this the Deep Space auditorium on their campus. This is where the keynotes were held.

This is a pretty cool video of what it’s like to get to the Deep Space auditorium. It also gives you an impression of how big this venue really is.

This is an interesting look at the massive tents they setup outside to be able to accommodate those who attended. Pretty massive and just as quirky as you’d expect.

Judy has always had a theme for the Epic UGMs and this year’s theme was Stories of Legend & Lore. Plus, Judy likes to dress the theme. This year she was dressed as a “Sprite” for her keynote.

Judy covered a bunch of things in her keynote. She shared that they have 53 specialty steering boards. It’s anecdotes like this that make me laugh when people wonder why EHR vendors don’t listen to doctors. Plus, it illustrates the specialty depth that a new entrant would have to compete with if they wanted to compete with Epic.

Looks like she talked about Epic’s “Always On” strategy which goes to our previous article about Epic having functionality available that users don’t turn on. She also talked about efforts to reduce note bloat (and decrease clicks) and their focus on Opioid, Sepsis (new peer reviewed study), and suicide.

One slide noted that refill protocols have saved 390 years of clinician time over one calendar year.

This was an interesting look at how Epic sees their “EHR galaxy”

Sounds like Judy and the Epic team were walking the fine line of data sharing vs information blocking. Epic had publicly come out against some of the aspects of the Information Blocking regulations, so this isn’t a surprise.

I do love their play on words from Share Everywhere (their data sharing solution) to “Cher Everywhere”. Plus, it was interesting to have a look at how they’re approaching collaborations with Health Plans and their efforts in genomics. They don’t share much, but you can see some details and partners in the slides below.

Dr. David K. Butler appropriately noted that this was the most talk of payors at an Epic UGM. That correlates well with much of the payor talk we’ve seen from Cerner too.

Sumit Rana took the stage as well to share some of the successes with MyChart over the last year (no doubt COVID fueled. Lots of numbers to chew on, but it’s great to see a 4x increase in appointments scheduled through MyChart. Illustrates well that many patients want the option to schedule their appointment digitally.

I was intrigued by what’s described as a point of care, no-build report driven by AI and machine learning. I kind of feel like I need to see this in action to better understand it, but the concept is intriguing.

This next slide from a session is hard to read, but you don’t need to read it to get the point. The point is that there’s a lot of legislation and rule making happening and plenty more ahead. No wonder we can’t keep up.

This kind of feels like a sales piece for Cosmos (welcome to some user conference sessions), but it does make a good point about Epic’s Cosmos having lower barriers to entry because of existing agreements.

I didn’t even see the session and I can guess that “Getting Rid of Stupid Stuff” was one of the best sessions at the event. There’s no worse burnout optimizing than Stupid Stuff. I wish I could have seen the session, but thanks to Rasu Shrestha for connecting it to other efforts to get rid of stupid stuff.

Of course, there was a bit of fun with axes too.

Hopefully next year COVID will be better and I can find a way to go to the Epic UGM to report from the event. Although, thanks to all those who shared about the experience. If you attended, how did it go? Was anything else shared that’s worth adding to the list? Let us know in the comments or on social media.

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John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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