CoxHealth transitions to new health record vendor

The start of March also signals the beginning of a new electronic health record vendor for CoxHealth.

Following a December 2023 announcement by the Springfield health system, CoxHealth partnered with Verona, Wisconsin-based health care software firm Epic Systems Corp. on the change to its health records system. CoxHealth was set to go live with MyChart, Epic’s patient portal, on March 1.

CoxHealth leaders chose Epic after a selection process that included input from hundreds of providers and staff members, according to officials, who declined to disclose financial terms of the deal. The health record vendor change is one of the largest technology upgrades in CoxHealth’s history, said Randy Berger, CoxHealth administrative director of corporate communications.

“Starting March 1, people can expect a significantly improved patient experience,” said Heather Swearengin, vice president of consumer experience at CoxHealth. “MyChart really allows patients to have a lot more access at their fingertips, which we’ve not really had historically and has been demanded by our patients for a long time.”

While CoxHealth officials were mum on the company’s investment in transitioning to Epic, the dollar figure for other health care systems installing Epic’s system across the country in recent years varied by tens of millions to hundreds of millions, according to trade magazine Becker’s Hospital Review.

New features
Sign-ups for MyChart began Feb. 16, Swearengin said, adding patients can do so either online at CoxHealth.com/mychart or through the MyChart app, available for Android and Apple devices. In MyChart, patients can schedule, change or cancel appointments, review lab results, view and request medication refills, manage accounts and pay bills, among other features.

“They’ll be able to complete questionnaires or paperwork, things that we would normally ask for when they get here in person,” Swearengin said. “They’ll be able to do that on their own before they get here. They can also arrange an urgent care or walk-in clinic visit.”

Prior to March 1, CoxHealth worked with Oracle, which offers an electronic medical records system formerly known as Cerner.

“Our current portal has really had limited ability for our patients to manage their care, so it’s a much more expanded opportunity for them to do that,” Swearengin said. “Once we’re live, if our patients are signed up for text notifications or email notifications, even if they don’t have the app, they’ll be able to still manage their care the same way through the links that we send them for notifications.”

CoxHealth’s transition to Epic follows Mercy Springfield Communities, which switched to Epic in 2009 as part of a systemwide adoption, according to Mercy’s website. Additionally, Springfield-based Jordan Valley Health transitioned to Epic from NextGen in 2024, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting.

Jordan Valley officials commented on their move to Epic in a statement.

“Our move to Epic strengthened our foundation for delivering exceptional patient care,” said Dr. Nick Pfannenstiel, executive vice president and chief operating officer. “With more integrated information and improved clinical workflows, our care teams can make faster, more informed decisions. This translates directly into a better patient experience and reinforces our commitment to delivering safe, high-quality care for our community now and for years to come.”

‘Thoughtful process’
The input by CoxHealth staff was an integral part of what Swearengin termed a “thoughtful process” to determine Epic was the right choice to support the health system’s needs.

“We’re always looking for how do we modernize our technology to deliver the very best experiences both for our patients and for our caregivers who provide care. So, with that in mind, we evaluated our current health record partner along with Epic through a multitude of lenses,” she said. “Through all of those lenses, it was just pretty clear that Epic is really considered the best electronic health record in the country. I think they have the ability to provide the tools that we need to elevate what we’re doing.”

Swearengin said CoxHealth needs to be thinking years ahead for its instruments to meet the needs of patients.

“Part of the time was spent conducting a systemwide evaluation to get input from all of our stakeholders – our physicians, our nurses, our operational teams – even patient feedback of what we need to really continue providing exceptional care, not just today but in the future,” she said.

A change of this magnitude required a lot of planning, Swearengin said, as to why a two-year runway was necessary for systemwide implementation. Officials were unable to provide the number of CoxHealth employees working on the Epic transition teams by press time.

“It’s not just designing what we’re going to have with Epic but making sure that we focus heavily on training and practice environments for our teams and go-live support,” she said. “It’s a pretty extensive planning process to make sure we’re educating everybody and make this transition as seamless as possible.”

CoxHealth officials said some of its online features were temporarily limited in the weeks leading up to the go-live date for MyChart. That included a pause beginning Feb. 9 to online appointment bookings through its provider directory until the planned March 1 launch. Additionally, requesting prescription refills were temporarily unavailable as of Feb. 22 until March 1.

Legal challenges
Beyond Springfield, Epic was targeted by the state of Texas, as the company is accused in an antitrust lawsuit filed in December 2025. The state alleges the medical records company holds a monopoly and is engaged in anticompetitive practices. The lawsuit follows two other federal cases filed against the company over the past couple years.

The Texas filing is aimed at Epic’s market dominance by highlighting that its databases today house more than 325 million patient records, representing more than 90% of the U.S. population, according to the court document.

However, the patient numbers noted in the lawsuit are disputed by Epic. A spokesperson for the company said MyChart is used by 195 million patients worldwide and by health systems in all 50 states.

Regarding the Texas lawsuit, the company released a statement to SBJ: “The action taken by Texas is flawed and misguided by its failure to understand both Epic’s business model and position in the market and the enormous contributions our company has made to our nation’s healthcare system illustrated by products like MyChart – software that tens of millions of Americans depend on every day.

“Every month, we improve quality of care by helping providers see a more comprehensive picture of their patient through over 725 million record exchanges – more than any other electronic health records vendor – and over half of these are with non-Epic systems. Health systems using Epic shared information with almost 1,000 patient-facing apps 2 billion times in the past year.”

Improved communication
As all of the Springfield health care systems will now be using MyChart, Swearengin said she expects communication to be improved.

“There is definitely better information sharing across teams by using Epic,” she said. “The patient owns their medical record and that’s available to them to share. So, as patients are coming to CoxHealth, we’ll be able to see care that they’ve had maybe provided elsewhere that we weren’t able to see historically.”

While Swearengin said CoxHealth is excited about the new patient portal, she recognizes there are some people who aren’t comfortable with technology or just don’t use it for their health care needs.

“I don’t want us to forget about those people,” she said. “We’re still going to be here to help people face to face or over the phone for those people who maybe don’t want to embrace the technology.”