and clinic, Faulkner said.
Epic is one of the country’s leading EHR software vendors but it would be an overstatement to say the company has cornered the healthcare provider market. According to a survey the research and investment firm Robert W. Baird & Co. took last March, about 21.3 percent of hospitals reported that Epic was their primary tool for managing patient records. In a separate Baird poll, from 2015, about 21.7 percent of physicians surveyed said Epic was their primary EHR system.
In the end, EHR firms acting alone may not be the ones to make their products more compatible when it comes to sharing patient records. In recent years, collectives such as Carequality (which Epic belongs to) and CommonWell (which Epic is noticeably absent from) have sprung up. While Epic has recently taken steps to put health records within closer reach of patients and providers, for now the company appears to place more value on helping its customers share data with each other than with outside organizations.
