Ken Bradberry, CPHIMS - Senior VP & CTO at The HCI Group explores the future of cloud technologies and how Epic can be integrated into strategic cloud computing services.

In today’s healthcare organizations, cloud services have become a strategic alternative to traditional application delivery. Cloud computing isn’t anything new to IT, and it now has the potential to change how healthcare organizations deliver cost effective, quality driven services to their patients. Considering the ever-increasing costs of keeping the lights on spending for IT, healthcare providers have no choice but to embrace the cloud in some form. This transformation is being driven by several forces, but the most basic are to cut costs and improve the quality of care.

Consumers now shop for healthcare like they do just about anything else. Confused by complex insurance provisions and upset by post-care bills, patients want pre-care estimates.

Healthcare organizations that provide patient estimates are currying favor with this new breed of consumers, thus helping them to increase revenue through customer satisfaction and repeat visits. Providers also are covering a greater percentage of their costs by collecting upfront payments tied to estimates.

With the close of 2017, we thought you might enjoy a compilation of the top 10 most popular blog posts of 2017, in one place. We hope you enjoyed the content from 2017, and look forward to even more helpful information in 2018. 

When the time comes for your Epic upgrade, proper planning and execution is imperative to your success. In this post, we've compiled a list of 10 areas of focus for you to consider with planning for your Epic upgrade.

Is your Epic system in need of a refresh?

Health systems across the globe face the challenge of balancing the competing daily demands of supporting their current systems and expansion, with the need to continue investing in systems optimization.

In this post, HCI's Vice President of Revenue Cycle & Optimization, Brad Rowlands looks at 5 steps for building your Epic optimization program. 

The year 2016 was one of growth for us here at The HCI Group. From the inception of our Healthcare IT Blog in August of 2013, up to the end of 2015, we had published nearly 100 different articles on Healthcare IT. In just 2016 alone, we reached that same number — including the launch of our Healthcare IT Podcast Series IT Podcast Series.

We would like to say thank you to all who have subscribed to our blog and our podcast, and that we can't wait to keep providing you with the best content that the Healthcare IT industry has to offer.

Before moving forward to 2017, however, we pause to take a look back at the posts that you, our subscribers, found the most value in during the year that was.

Keeping up with Epic Upgrades will be a regular event for your organization, as Epic releases major versions of its software about every 18 months. In order to stay within Good Maintenance requirements and receive the latest functionality, you want to ensure to not be behind more than 2 versions. It is not uncommon for organizations to fall behind with these upgrades, and many organizations may feel it is advantageous to utilize a double upgrade to catch up to the most recent version. While this strategy does provide the latest functionality features, as well as provide a cost savings over two separate upgrades, it does bring some additional challenges.

The success of your Epic implementation depends on having the right people on your team. Whether you have recently signed Epic, need to support your build, have upcoming training and go-live initiatives, or need to augment your Epic team to support an upgrade, we’ve gathered together some of our most popular posts on building your Epic team.

For the fifth episode of our Monday Morning Healthcare IT Podcast Series, we take a call with Chelsea Wyatt, our Director of Epic Services here at the HCI Group. Tom and Chelsea will be going over some key strategies and cost considerations that healthcare organizations should be keeping in mind during an Epic upgrade project.

So, now that you’ve signed your Epic contract, what’s next? 

We’ve gathered some of the best Epic subject matter experts (SME) in the industry to help guide you through the various stages of your project. Below, you’ll find their advice and recommendations stemming from innumerable hours spent managing Epic projects at organizations around the globe.