Epic is without doubt one of the most dominant firms in healthcare, managing medical information for greater than two-thirds of the U.S. inhabitants and shaping how clinicians doc and ship care every single day. The EHR vendor at the moment covers greater than half of acute multispecialty hospital beds within the nation, and it generated $5.7 billion in income final 12 months.
Throughout a chat at Forbes’ Healthcare Summit in New York Metropolis on Thursday, Judy Faulkner, Epic’s billionaire CEO and co-founder, shared her ideas on how the corporate has been in a position to obtain its success.
In contrast to many large know-how firms, Epic constructed its empire with out enterprise capital, splashy acquisitions or a public itemizing — and Faulkner has been defending this independence fiercely ever because the firm launched in 1979.
“Actually, my property plan, which covers the voting of my inventory, has guidelines for voting, and it says you possibly can’t ever vote to go public or to be acquired. And we now have three CEOs from our prospects, who’re referred to as the belief protectors, and their job is to sue anybody who doesn’t observe the voting guidelines,” she remarked.
Epic’s independence allowed the corporate to make long-term selections with out strain from buyers or quarterly earnings studies, Faulkner famous.
She and the remainder of Epic’s management have intentionally averted conventional MBA-driven considering. For instance, Faulkner identified that Epic has by no means actually had budgets.
“We are saying, for those who want it, purchase it. If you happen to don’t want it, don’t purchase it. And that works properly,” she declared.
On the finish of the day, she attributes a lot of Epic’s success to the ambition behind its unique imaginative and prescient: to create software program that tracks somebody’s medical info throughout previous, current and future. And as healthcare supply evolves, Faulkner famous that Epic is adapting to handle information throughout all settings, not simply inpatient or outpatient.
Many opponents have targeted on components of care, whereas Epic has aimed for continuity throughout the entire affected person expertise, she acknowledged.
Now, Faulkner mentioned Epic’s subsequent chapter will hinge on the way it harnesses the large datasets flowing via its ecosystem, significantly as AI instruments start to remodel medical decision-making.
Photograph: Sergio Mendoza Hochmann, Getty Pictures
