Epic Systems became the EHR vendor of choice for Mayo Clinic in a decision one year ago and now news has broken that the Wisconsin-based EHR company is now the owner of the latter’s 62,000-square-foot data center, according to a Milwaukee Business Journal.
Mark Reilly reports the deal to be worth $46 million, a four-year sale-leaseback contract with an option to continue in perpetuity.
Critics of the Mayo-Epic partnership could be led to believe that this most recent deal as a deciding factor in the Minnesota health system’s choice to implement Epic EHR replacement technology. However, an Epic spokesperson noted that the transaction involving the Mayo datacenter was entirely separate.
“Epic needed a high quality disaster recovery data center that was some distance away from its production data center yet still close enough to get to easily,” the spokesperson told EHRIntelligence.com. “Mayo had a high quality data center in an excellent location that was too large for their needs. The terms for the purchase and the terms for Mayo’s portion that they will lease from Epic are at industry standard prices.”
Coupled with the EHR implementation deal, the data center transaction deepens further the relationship between Epic and one of its most prominent newest clients.
Just last month, the Department of Defense (DoD)modified a component of the Defense Healthcare Management System Modernization (DHMSM) project to have Cerner Corporation host its health IT infrastructure.
Could Epic use the new data center as a means of competing with Cerner as far as hosting other clients? The remains to be seen. That being said, the only detail about the former Mayo data center are that it exceeded its own needs but not by how much.
Epic struck a deal with Mayo last January, a decision that will see the replacement of Cerner and GE systems with Epic’s in an EHR implementation to begin in 2017. Mayo leadership tied the decision to clinical and financial motivations.
“We’re confident in choosing Epic as our strategic partner as we continue to enhance Mayo Clinic’s excellence in health care and medical innovation,” Mayo Clinic President and CEO John Noseworthy, MD, said at the time.
The Epic EHR will replace three EHR systems currently in use at the health system and include a revenue cycle management system.
The goal of shifting to a single, integrated EHR platform is accelerating medical innovation among Mayo’s clinicians.
“With our staff working together on a common system, we will be able to accelerate innovation, enhance services and provide a better experience for our patients,” CMIO Dawn Milliner, MD, revealed.
A mixture of Mayo and Epic staff along with external consultants will comprise the EHR implementation team, and the timing of the decision was based on the need to assemble the appropriate project team, Mayo CIO Cris Ross noted.
Mayo’s Epic EHR selection was seen as a major coup for one industry analyst who told theWisconsin State Journal that the Minnesotan health system was “one of the crown jewels in the market.” Some even speculated that the move would bolster Epic’s chances at winning the DoD EHR modernization project, yet its bid came up short and Cerner came out of top.
For its part, Epic capped off 2015 with the addition of Vanderbilt University Medical Center to its coterie of high-performing, nationally-recognized health systems in late December.
What remains for both health systems is gearing up for and properly managing these important Epic EHR implementations. Where this Mayo data center fits in to the picture is still unknown other than that it will play an important role in the health system’s new health IT ecosystem.
