Epic EHR Still Costing Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

It may be about time that Epic EHRs come with a warning label that has nothing to do with systems themselves but everything to do with the costs incurred by healthcare organizations adopting solutions from Epic Systems and how they will affect their bottom lines during the earliest phases of implementation.

Such is the case of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the results of its last fiscal year 2012–2013. According to Fran Daniel of the Winston-Salem Journal, the academic medical center is reporting a bigger loss than earlier reported.

When the unaudited results were released to bondholders on August 29, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center indicated an overall loss of $571,000 for the fiscal year ending June 30. This differs from an operational loss of $4.5 million and a $56.6-million drop in operational revenue reported in the final audit results.