Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1372822
52 WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP POPULATION HEALTH Epic CEO Judy Faulkner on Big Tech competition, client relationships & no plans for retirement By Jackie Drees A s founder and CEO of Epic, Judy Faulkner has led the multibil- lion-dollar EHR giant to dominate the market space. In an interview with Forbes healthcare writer Katie Jennings published April 8, Ms. Faulk- ner shared insights on the company's client relationship culture, health IT competition and her role as CEO. 1. Ms. Faulkner said she views new rela- tionships with healthcare customers as a wedding; in 2020, Altamonte Springs, Fla.- based AdventHealth began its transition to Epic, a process that will take more than three years and cost about $650 million to complete, according to the report. With ongoing maintenance, the project will cost millions more annually. "It's a very long relationship for many of our customers," Ms. Faulkner said. "[A new cus- tomer] didn't feel like a new baby. It felt more like a wedding." 2. Epic has 564 customers, which represent al- most 2,400 hospitals across the world and 225 million patients in the U.S. In 2020, the com- pany posted more than $3.3 billion in revenue, and Ms. Faulkner said she estimated about $500 million in foregone revenue for COVID-19 re- lated soware it provided free of charge. "It never seemed right to me to make money off COVID," she said. 3. When it comes to tech giants like Amazon, Google and Microso, Ms. Faulkner said she is not concerned about them entering the healthcare space. "I think that what will happen is that a few of them will do very well. And the majority of them won't," she said. "It's not us as much as the health systems who have to respond to the patient saying, 'Send my data here,' or 'Send my data there.'" 4. Ms. Faulkner, who is 78, said she has no plans to retire. She has not named a succes- sor to the company, and none of her three children work at Epic. She has secured the company's future only insofar as it will never be taken public. She has split her 47 percent stock in the company into voting shares that can't be sold and have gone into a trust man- aged by family members and employees. "I enjoy what I do and I'd like to do it as long as I am effective and can bring value in the job," she said. 5. Aer having read that the average person dies two years aer leaving the workforce, Ms. Faulkner said she worries about what happens to people aer they retire. "ey seem to lose that edge that says, 'Why am I waking up in the morning? What is my day going to be?' I wake up and think, 'How do I get everything done in my day?'" n Men vs. women: Which physicians spend more time in EHR? By Jackie Drees T here appears to be a significant gender difference in EHR use, with female physicians spending about 30 minutes more per day on EHRs than their male counterparts, according to a study published April 5 in the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association. A team of researchers led by New Haven, Conn.-based Yale Medicine's Edward Melnick, MD, measured core ef- ficiencies of EHR technologies in seven areas. A group of physicians proposed the areas, which were total EHR time spent during an eight-hour shift, work done outside of standard work hours, documenting patient health, docu- menting prescriptions, responding to emails, coordinating medical orders and undivided attention given to patients. The researchers applied the standard measurements across EHR systems using different vendor products; they examined Yale New Haven Health, which uses Epic, and Columbia, Md.-based MedStar Health, which uses Cerner. The study also included data from 573 physicians across multiple specialties. After controlling for physician age, specialty, vendor and number of hours worked, the researchers found that fe- male physicians spent an additional 33 minutes per day on EHRs compared to male physicians. It's unclear what drove this difference, but Dr. Melnick said he wants to fur- ther explore the observation. "This finding is so compelling because it suggests that fe- male physicians interact with the EHR in a different way than male physicians do," he said in an April 5 news re- lease. "We don't know what it is, but now that we have a way to measure it and identify it, we can begin to under- stand it better and hopefully build systems that address those needs." n "I enjoy what I do and I'd like to do it as long as I am effective and can bring value in the job." - Judy Faulkner, Epic