Epic Systems Says Alliance Between Electronic Health Records Vendors Caught It By Surprise

In a bid to put a private sector stamp on the push for interoperability, a group of electronic health records vendors led by Cerner and McKesson formed the CommonWell Health Alliance yesterday. “Everyone in the industry has been invited to participate,” said John Hammergren, McKesson’s chief executive officer, at the press conference for the launch.

“No, we were not asked to join,” says Carl Dvorak, chief operating officer of Epic Systems. “We found out about it when you guys did.” Epic is one of the leading vendors of electronic health records. The privately-owned company generated $1.5 billion in revenues last year; almost half of the country’s electronic health records are Epic’s.