As it vies for the largest government contract to date for electronic health records, Epic Systems founder and CEO Judy Faulkner is defending the company from criticism it doesn’t play nice with others.
In an interview with Politico, the once press-shy Faulkner says Epic is not putting up obstacles to the creation of a national system where medical records can be easily shared.
“If we don’t speak up, people will believe what others say about us, and an unanswered accusation becomes seen as the truth if you don’t respond,” Faulkner told Politico.“We’re now in a position where we have to.”
The leader in an industry where the U.S. government is spending $30 billion to try and make medical records more accessible, Epic has faced increasing criticism that its software is cumbersome to use and was designed not to work with other systems.
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In fact, Epic has become “the lightning rod for everything that doctors and IT experts don’t like about electronic health records,” writes Politico reporters David Pittman and Arthur Allen in a story posted Tuesday.
“While industry ratings have ranked Epic above many other EHRs in terms of physician usability, critics charge the company fails to easily share patient records and throws its weight around in the market,” they write.
U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) even singled out Epic during a July hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, claiming a possibility “that fraud is being perpetrated on the American people.”
That charge, Faulkner says, has forced the privately held company to take a higher profile in defending itself. She says hearing the company’s named dropped by Gingrey was a “shock” and “realization they we can’t hide anymore.”
To that end, Epic in August hired veteran D.C. lobbyist Brad Card after never before having a lobbying presence in Washington. Card has since been making the rounds of congressional offices to talk up the company’s track record which he says doesn’t reflect its reputation, according to Politico.
Some of the attacks directed at Epic appear to be related to Faulkner’s ties to Democratic political interests. She has been an outspoken critic of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby, and has given money to Democratic candidates including Mary Burke who is locked in a tight race for governor against incumbent Republican Scott Walker.
The jabs at Faulkner included a report in the National Review earlier this month blaming Epic health records for failing to keep an infected Ebola patient from leaving a Dallas hospital.
“Is someone covering up for a crony billionaire Obama donor and her controversy-plagued, taxpayer-subsidized electronic-medical-records company?” writes columnist Michelle Malkin.
That column came after Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital said a procedural flaw in its online health-records system led to miscommunication between nurses and doctors. The hospital sent Ebola victim Thomas Duncan home despite his showing signs of the disease but had to admit him with worse symptoms three days later.
But the health care industry itself is worried about medical records connectivity — or rather the lack of it.
At the Cleveland Clinic’s annual Medical Innovation Summit held this week, industry leaders said the biggest impediment to health care innovation was a lack of interoperability among clinical systems. That came via a report in Healthcare IT News.
Date: October 30, 2014