This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the smartest robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

Executive Interview: EHR Competition Heats Up - What CxOs Need to Know with Polly Parrent

[00:00:00]

Today's episode is brought to you by Nordic Global Health. With over 3,300 consultants and class leading expertise in Epic, Cerner, and ERP implementations, Nordic has helped 700 plus health systems navigate complex technology transformations from strategy. Through ongoing optimization, they combine deep clinical knowledge with technical execution to help you actually realize ROI from your IT investments.

Learn more at this week, help.com/nordic.

I'm Bill Russell, creator of this Week Health, where our mission is to transform healthcare, one connection at a time. This is an executive interview

quick powerful Conversations with Leaders Driving Change. So let's get started.

Bill Russell: All right. Today we have an executive interview live from the Delta Sky Lounge here in Atlanta. Concourse e If you're wondering the glamorous life that I live, Poly Parent is with me [00:01:00] with Nordic, who heads up EHR and ERP.

Implementations, SVP of that practice. So you're, your job is the world in all that is within it. E eer, P and EHRI mean, could there be anything bigger to like cover?

Polly Parrent: I, I'm, I'm not sure. I mean, Kevin is, has the pleasure of having all the cloud, which I think technically is bigger than all of that.

So he can have that time. The clouding

Bill Russell: encompasses all the things that you do as well. Yes. Exactly. When you say ERP implementations, I mean. you know, is it all the major players?

Polly Parrent: Yeah. Right now at Nordic, we're focused mostly on the Infor Lawson space and workday. We're starting to see more ask from our clients around Fusion and supporting in the Oracle space as they become, I would say, more competitive right now in the market.

For our clients. And so I think we'll keep branching out there, but right now we've focused on where our partners are asking us to be and that's really Workday and Lawson in for

Bill Russell: Where they take you. Yeah. And and so you recently were down at the Oracle Health and Life Sciences and you were up at UGM as [00:02:00] well. I did not get to the Oracle Summit. They've never invited me to the Oracle Summit. However, Epic did invite me up to Verona, and so I got to sit in through some of the sessions up there and see what's going on up there. I'm curious. I mean my conversations with people walking out of there, and this seems to be recurring every year, is, oh my gosh, there's so many new things.

I dunno how we're gonna do all these things. Yeah. Do you get that same sense?

Polly Parrent: Yeah. Well, and I would add to that of there's so many things that are new, but also things that we haven't taken advantage of yet. So things that have matured and that are coming along further than maybe where they were when they were first released.

And so I think that's a conversation we're actually having with some clients around, gosh, I didn't know that this one could do that. And so if you look at some of the ways that. Epic is talking about how their clients are shining, you know, their ratings that they've got. They're now starting to look at how well are you actually adopting the full features.

And there is so much capacity there, even with [00:03:00] things that have existed for years that clients aren't necessarily taking advantage of or they might still be paying. For another partner or vendor to provide those services. So there's the new and exciting stuff you know, with some of the Cosmos releases and the ambient scribe conversation, obviously very exciting.

But there's some of the other things too that. If you look at some of the patient portal engagement side of things and what you can do with MyChart, there's still a lot of features that people don't have turned on that their patients are asking for too. So there's a lot to be done still in those spaces.

Bill Russell: Yeah. It's, so they change the Stars program and it's about adoption and usage and those kinds of things. I mean, what are the systems maybe that have come out. Maybe not this year, but over the last year or so. We'll focus on UGM to start then We'll

Polly Parrent: Go

Bill Russell: to Oracle as well, because I do wanna talk about that, but what are some of the things like over the last year and a half, that people haven't gotten to yet that have, for your clients?

They've seen a significant, [00:04:00] I don't know, benefit of getting those things implemented.

Polly Parrent: Yeah, I mean, a lot of our clients right now are focused on Beaker. Obviously the lab space has been one of those where people have been waiting for a long time for beaker to be able to replace some of the spaces that they've still got.

Either, you know, potentially Oracle if they were coming off of Cerner, or they might have Soft or one of those other vendors out there. And so Beaker is really busy and there's a lot of benefit to having that transition into your fully integrated system. So that's an obvious one for clients.

I think some of the other applications that we see trending behind in some spaces Willow Cupid there's a couple of those being where there's some smaller needs depending on what services your organization has. I think the other spaces that have evolved quite a bit are more around some of the analytics and, spaces around there where people are going, I don't know what to use where. And so with some of the shifts that Epic has [00:05:00] made and some of the things that are released, but then also the introduction of cloud and all of the big things that come with cloud. People are trying to figure out, what do I need, where and when?

And so we're having a lot of conversations with people about. How can they plan their cloud strategies with their risk strategies there to go, okay, I'm gonna do multi-cloud and I'm gonna do this year, and I'm gonna shift these things here, but I also need these analytics for research. I also need these analytics for the day-to-day and making sure that you're balancing the cost of it all.

I think was, is, you know, if I was a CIO. That's the thing that starts to weigh down heavily, is there, all these different things are great options, but ultimately you do have that limited budget to figure out all those problems to solve as well.

Bill Russell: I noticed you didn't talk about Cheers. And I'm sorry.

Does Epic's ERP have a name that, a funky name that I don't know about? I

Polly Parrent: haven't heard a funky name yet. I don't think so. I, [00:06:00] we've got a meeting coming up with Epic and I'm excited to hear more about all the things that they're doing there. But yeah, cheers is a space where there is quite a bit that's available for clients and we're seeing clients who've got CRMs in place.

Evaluating and figuring out that a lot of the gaps can be solved with cheers and everything that's available. I think the piece that I see many of the, what I would call middle and smaller clients that are in the Epic space now. May not have even had a robust CRM. And so not even necessarily understanding what's possible with tiers, because they haven't had that full capability with another system either.

And so it's not necessarily a replacement conversation. It's a where does this make sense? Do we have the infrastructure and organizational infrastructure? Aligned to actually support all of the workflows and things that can be enabled with something like Cheers.

Bill Russell: I had a conversation with a CIO about cheers and we were sort of, he's like, I don't even understand, [00:07:00] you know, why did they do this?

Why did they do this? I said, you know. The reality is, I mean, the biggest competitor there obviously is Salesforce, and you sit there and go

The problem is when you go to a Salesforce, like, like I did at our health system, we went to Salesforce, and it's the gift that keeps on giving.

All of a sudden you have, well, we need five people to run Salesforce. All of a sudden you, you turn to the left, you turn to the right. All of a sudden it's a team of 25 people.

Polly Parrent: And they're

Bill Russell: just gobbling up resources. And the, and so you have to customize the heck out of it to get anything out of it.

Polly Parrent: Yeah.

Bill Russell: Is one thing. So it's very resource intensive, which doesn't make it any better than Epic. because Epic is generally resource intensive on that side as well. But the thing is, what I found in talking to people about Cheers is they only use like 10 to 15% of what Salesforce does anyway. And Cheers is really focused in on that 10 to 15%.

Polly Parrent: And I will say one of the things I think Epic has done well, if you are willing to open up those conversations, and one of the things we've done as a partner with Epic is. [00:08:00] Start to identify the, I'll say bite-size pieces of cheers that people could take advantage of, or the ways that they can dip their toe into those spaces if they don't have the robust infrastructure that sometimes people have that, you know, if they're on a Salesforce and they've got this massive team and they've got this whole group of people focusing on it.

I think Epic has done a really good job of packaging up that information and saying, even if you just were to do these three things this is how Cheers can benefit you. And I think that's where honestly I see our team spending a lot of time in 2026 is sitting down with our CIOs and the CMIOs and CNOs or whomever it is to go, what are you trying to achieve?

And. Number one, what in the Epic ecosphere do you already own that can help get that done? And who do we need to bring in to enable with the right information?

Bill Russell: Let's talk about Oracle a little bit. It's interesting [00:09:00] because, I mean, one of the biggest, buzz things at Epic UGM was their announcement on ambient and the fact that they were gonna wrap Their package around Microsoft's ambient technology and making it an Epic solution. And for the life of me, I couldn't figure that out. And somebody said to me, it's a response to Oracle. because Oracle's having actually getting some traction in what they're saying, which is, Hey Epic's built on a very old database.

It's you know, we are going to have an AI centric, we're gonna have a voice driven EHR and I. I, I mean, I heard that and I said, okay, I, that makes more sense to me than anything else I've heard. So I'm gonna i'm gonna gravitate towards that. But I mean, is that what you heard at Oracle. Are they just touting, Hey, there's gonna be a different EHR, there's gonna be a different way that things. function Yeah.

Polly Parrent: Yeah. I mean, last year that's how it felt. Was there, there's gonna be something different. Couldn't really describe it as [00:10:00] well as I think anyone wanted to hear.

This year felt much more tangible. And quite frankly, it made me excited for the competitiveness in the market. To be a little bit more reinvigorated. They provided a lot more detail around the architecture and how they're using that semantic layer. To utilize what exists in Oracle, Cerner, millennium today, add in the layer essentially that will fit between that and the AI architecture, so to speak and how that will integrate and.

It is it's definitely exciting if it can be executed. I think everyone right now needs to see the execution and the voice or the semantic side of things I think makes good sense. What I will say is the ambient side of things, what they've done over the last year, we got a couple of our clients that are using that technology, it's been really good.

It's been proven out. It's a good experience. They are listening to [00:11:00] clinicians and users, which I think is a good shift from what those clients have felt over the past maybe five to 10 years. And so it's moving in the right direction. The next year of execution is gonna be a proving point in my opinion.

Bill Russell: This conversation goes in a lot of different directions of, you know, are we gonna be seeing big swaps in the other direction? I don't think we'll be seeing big swaps in the other direction, but there's still big swaps in the market. There's the international market's.

Obviously, I mean, Oracle's not going anywhere. They've got the government contracts. I mean, that's a significant amount of care and the the data going back and forth between the two. I, I mean. It's, I'm glad there's competition there. And I'm glad there's discussion, anything on the MEDITECH side because MEDITECH still has significant market share in the United States.

Polly Parrent: Yeah. Yeah. And I think like I said I get excited where I see them all three evolving, quite frankly. And I do think it's primarily a three group system at this point as far as what we see. We [00:12:00] work with a lot of medium to smaller clients still, and that are in the Oracle space of trying to decide are they going to stay where they are they gonna make a shift?

And in many cases, financially moving to something like Epic is not gonna make sense for them. And so for those clients, I am excited about them being able to utilize the investments they've already made. If Oracle can prove out what they're putting out there, those clients will really start to see what they've needed for a while.

In that EHR space and like I said, in some cases are starting to see it already, which is fantastic. In the MEDITECH space, we see so many clients that are still on some of the old architecture that need to make the shift to mass expanse. And they're trying to figure out that path. And so, they are the ones that I would say are happy MEDITECH clients are finding their way, but it seems slow.

They're

Bill Russell: not still on the client server versions, are they?

Polly Parrent: Some of them, yes. Y yeah. And so, and it's a big shift. [00:13:00] It's a, I mean, it feels in many ways, like a net new implementation. I will say MEDITECH is doing a good job of offering things in the mass space or in some of these other spaces to make it, a little bit easier for their clients, but what we are seeing is a lot of the design it is a bit of a redesign because you are going from an older architecture to a much more robust architecture that's going to offer newer features. And so there is quite a bit of lift that goes into that change.

I think we're still gonna have a lot of clients that are happy with what they've got with MEDITECH. It does have the ERP built into it and some of those things that. Some clients really need, depending on what they are looking for, you, you have long-term care workflows that are built in there that are in many ways more robust than what you might see with maybe Oracle's long-term care solution or what people have created on their own.

So I think there's some uniqueness in there that fits into certain health systems that we'll continue to see them be happy about that. For us at Nordic MEDITECH is still [00:14:00] a really big player in the Canadian space as well, and so there's a lot of provinces that are either on a consolidated model or continuing to evolve their MEDITECH because of the uniqueness of how they deliver services too as a province.

Bill Russell: I'm trying to figure out what the closed question is here for this, for this interview, because it's if somebody's on MEDITECH, if there's somebody who is on Oracle and there's somebody who's on Epic. There's a lot to be excited about. I mean, there's advance on all three of those.

Yeah. And we are sort of seeing that, that competition and people would say, oh, there is no competition anymore. But there absolutely is. I mean, they each have market share and they're each doing things distinct, and if people wanna look at it, I mean, Canada's you know, the international market is one of which, it's still up for grabs, essentially.

Mm-hmm.

Polly Parrent: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think the thing that I'm just in reflecting, getting back from Orlando this week. The thing that I would encourage anyone out there is make sure you are reacting to it. I think that's the [00:15:00] thing I've seen in the Oracle space more recently is clients kind of sitting back and waiting and going like, I gotta see what happens.

Same in the MEDITECH space, like no one's being forced yet, and so there's a lot of, I'm gonna sit back and wait. And And I think the opportunity right now is to make your plan and start shifting. I think if people wait another two years, they're going to start losing providers. If they don't have some of these features that they're going to expect they're going to.

Have issues in the revenue cycle when other people are becoming more competitive because they have some of these features. So I think that's the thing that I would encourage people is start to make your plans on how you're gonna get there. And it can be stepwise in some cases, but I think waiting, you're going to start to really lose your competitive edge if you don't have a plan on how you're gonna get there, by the time the others in your market are already there.

Bill Russell: Fantastic message to get out there because, you know, we see things changing on the [00:16:00] other side as well. So on the payer side, they're implementing AI all over the place.

Polly Parrent: And

Bill Russell: the larger health systems in the United States. I talk to them and they're like, yeah, look, our AI is now talking their to their AI and, you know, they're generating letters and going back and forth.

And if we were doing that with, you know, people on our side and AI on their side, we already. Significant disadvantage. Yes and yes. And that at disadvantage is only gonna get exacerbated over the next couple of years.

Polly Parrent: Yeah, I think that's the leaps of technology right now. It's both very exciting and also terrifying, I think.

Because even if you're, even, if you're just dabbling in it, at least you're starting to get things stood up. You're starting to think about the governance of it, what your organization is or isn't comfortable with. As things evolve, if you're not introducing some of those conversations now you're going to have issues down the road when.

Again, it becomes a competitive advantage both from a, I mean, we're looking at very thin operating margins in healthcare. [00:17:00] This could be the difference maker in some of those spaces and has been for some health systems that have taken advantage of some of the early on side of things. And so I think I would encourage people to start to dabble in it, at minimum.

Bill Russell: Well, Polly, thank you. We're, we'll have to plan on doing this again next year after you go to these conferences. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, if anyone from Oracle is listening, I'm just down the street. They just have to send the invite. I can drive over and go to the conference, but

Polly Parrent: Absolutely.

It's so nice. Like I said, it's exciting to see the advancements for our clients and I do feel a lot more energy this year with, we've got MEDITECH live going on right now and it's an exciting year and I think again, we'll see a lot more evolve with everything our clients are seeing.

So. It's great. Fantastic.

Bill Russell: Well, thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate it. Yeah,

Polly Parrent: thanks Bill. Have a good rest of your day.

Thanks for joining us for this executive interview with me, bill Russell. Every healthcare leader needs a community they can lean on and learn from. Subscribe at this week, [00:18:00] health.com/subscribe and share this conversation with your team. Together we're transforming healthcare.

Thanks for listening. That's all for now.