Healthcare organizations don’t just implement Epic Application Support Services—they build their operational future on it. After three decades in the trenches of healthcare IT, I’ve watched countless organizations struggle with the gap between Epic’s powerful capabilities and the practical reality of making those capabilities work for clinicians on the ground. The disconnect isn’t theoretical—it costs millions in unrealized efficiency and directly impacts patient care.
Epic support isn’t a luxury or afterthought. It’s the invisible infrastructure that transforms an expensive software purchase into a living, evolving clinical ecosystem. The right support doesn’t just fix what breaks—it anticipates needs, removes friction, and continually adapts your Epic implementation to the changing demands of healthcare delivery.
Most organizations implement Epic based on a 10-year investment horizon, yet many underestimate the ongoing resources required to extract maximum value throughout that decade. The days of “set it and forget it” EHR implementations are long gone. Today’s healthcare leaders recognize that continuous optimization and support represent the difference between an Epic system that merely functions and one that fundamentally transforms care delivery.
Core Epic Application Support Services
The backbone of effective Epic support encompasses several interconnected service areas that work in concert to maintain and enhance your EHR environment. Let’s break down what matters most.
Implementation Assistance and Integration
Implementation assistance forms the foundation of your Epic journey. This isn’t merely about installing software—it’s about configuring and customizing Epic to align with your organization’s unique clinical workflows and operational requirements. The Virtelligence implementation team works alongside your staff to establish best practices, provide comprehensive training, and deliver technical support throughout the deployment process.
Integration services focus on creating seamless connections between your Epic system and other critical healthcare applications. Healthcare data doesn’t exist in isolation. Your lab systems, imaging solutions, revenue cycle platforms—they must communicate flawlessly with Epic. Our support specialists design, implement, and maintain interfaces that facilitate smooth data exchange, creating a cohesive healthcare ecosystem rather than a collection of disjointed technology islands.
Training and Go-Live Support
Even the most sophisticated Epic implementation fails without proper training and transition support. The leap from training environment to live clinical use represents a crucial moment where proper support makes or breaks user adoption.
Our training programs are tailored to specific user roles and responsibilities—because the needs of an ED physician differ dramatically from those of a billing specialist. We don’t just teach button-clicking; we contextualize Epic within existing workflows to promote meaningful adoption. During go-live, our support team provides hands-on assistance, troubleshooting issues in real-time and building user confidence during those critical first weeks of implementation.
System Updates and Performance Optimization
Healthcare never stands still—neither should your Epic environment. Regular system updates ensure you benefit from the latest features, security patches, and performance enhancements. Our support team collaborates on performance optimization, addressing system responsiveness issues before they impact clinician efficiency.
The difference between reactive and proactive support isn’t subtle—it’s measured in downtime avoided, clinician satisfaction preserved, and patient care uninterrupted. Our monitoring systems identify potential issues before they escalate, allowing us to resolve them with minimal disruption to your operations.
The Virtelligence Advantage
What separates exceptional Epic support from adequate service? It’s not just technical expertise—it’s a fundamentally different approach to partnership and problem-solving.
Time-and-Materials Based Consultation
The traditional managed services model often leaves organizations paying for unused hours or locked into rigid support contracts that don’t flex with changing needs. Virtelligence operates on a time-and-materials basis, ensuring you pay only for actual support hours worked—nothing more. This approach eliminates unnecessary project management costs and gives you complete transparency into your support investment.
Healthcare IT needs fluctuate dramatically—patient volume surges, regulatory changes, M&A activity—all impact your Epic support requirements. Our flexible model scales with these changing demands, providing expertise when and where you need it most.
Rapid Response and Deployment
When critical issues arise, every minute counts. Our rapid response protocols ensure quick assembly of the right expertise to address urgent needs—whether it’s troubleshooting system performance issues during peak hours or supporting unplanned downtime recovery. We maintain a deep bench of senior Epic consultants ready to deploy on short notice, often resolving critical path issues within hours rather than days.
Customized Support Experience
Cookie-cutter support models neglect the unique aspects of your Epic implementation. We recognize that keeping your specific needs at the forefront is essential for improving operational efficiency and enhancing both patient and provider engagement.
Your organizational culture, clinical priorities, and technical environment shape our support approach. Some clients need extensive training and change management; others require deep technical expertise for complex integrations. We adapt our support model to your reality rather than forcing your organization into a predetermined support framework.
Strategic Implementation and Go-Live Support
Epic implementations represent massive organizational change—far beyond installing software. The technology itself is just one piece of a complex puzzle involving workflow redesign, data migration, and fundamental changes to how clinicians and staff perform their daily work.
Initial Implementation Success Factors
Implementing Epic demands meticulous planning, coordination, and execution. Our experienced consultants help outline implementation steps, develop comprehensive plans, and ensure system configuration meets your clinical and operational needs. We identify potential risks early, develop mitigation strategies, and keep implementation phases on schedule and within budget.
The biggest implementation pitfall isn’t technical—it’s failing to address the human element of change. Our approach emphasizes stakeholder engagement from day one, ensuring clinical voices shape the implementation process rather than simply reacting to it.
Go-Live Support That Makes the Difference
Go-live represents the moment of truth for any Epic implementation. The transition from training to production uses tests not just the system but the entire organizational readiness. Our go-live support encompasses:
- At-the-elbow assistance for clinicians during initial use
- Rapid issue triage and resolution
- Real-time workflow adjustments
- Command center operations to coordinate response
- Detailed tracking of issues for post-go-live optimization
The first 72 hours of go-live often determine long-term adoption success. Our support teams work around the clock during this critical period, ensuring clinicians have immediate assistance as they navigate the new system. This intensive support gradually transitions to steady-state operations as users gain confidence and proficiency.
Security and Compliance: Protecting Patient Data
In healthcare IT, security isn’t a feature—it’s a fundamental requirement. The increasing sophistication of cyber threats combined with stringent regulatory requirements makes Epic security and compliance a continuous challenge.
Our security support services help implement robust safeguards within your Epic environment, including access controls, encryption, and audit mechanisms. We provide guidance on meeting industry standards such as HIPAA and HL7, ensuring your Epic implementation maintains the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of patient information.
Security isn’t a one-time implementation but an ongoing process. Our proactive approach includes:
- Regular security assessments to identify vulnerabilities
- Monitoring for potential security threats
- Guidance on implementing security patches
- User access reviews and privilege management
- Security incident response planning
The cost of a single data breach far exceeds any investment in security support. Our approach balances rigorous protection with clinical usability, ensuring security measures enhance rather than hinder care delivery.
System Optimization and Upgrade Management
Epic releases regular updates every 12-18 months, introducing new features, fixing bugs, and enhancing security. These upgrades present both opportunity and challenge—the potential for improved functionality balanced against the risk of disruption.
Upgrade Support Services
Our upgrade support helps healthcare organizations plan and execute upgrades efficiently, minimizing disruption while maximizing benefit. We assist with:
- Upgrade planning and project management
- Testing new functionality
- Preserving customizations during upgrades
- Training on new features
- Post-upgrade optimization
The approach to Epic upgrades has evolved dramatically over the years. What once involved lengthy downtime and massive training efforts now requires surgical precision and minimal disruption. Our methodology leverages years of experience to streamline the upgrade process, often reducing downtime and training requirements by 30-40% compared to industry averages.
Continuous Optimization
Between major upgrades lies the ongoing work of optimization—fine-tuning your Epic implementation to better serve clinicians and patients. Our optimization services identify opportunities to improve workflow efficiency, enhance user satisfaction, and derive greater value from your Epic investment.
Optimization isn’t just technical refinement—it’s about aligning technology with evolving clinical needs. We partner with your clinical leaders to identify pain points, gather user feedback, and implement targeted improvements that enhance both efficiency and satisfaction.
Building an Effective Epic Support Team
Creating an effective Epic support team requires strategic thinking, careful selection, and ongoing development. Based on decades of experience, we’ve identified six critical considerations for building a support team that drives end-user satisfaction.
1. Understand Your Organization’s Epic-Related Needs
Your support team must deeply understand your organization’s needs regarding clinical workflows, data sharing, digital transformation goals, and healthcare services. You need staff committed to these needs with the skills to enhance Epic accordingly. This understanding goes beyond technical knowledge—it requires healthcare context and operational insight.
2. Align with Projected Growth
Support capacity must align with your organization’s strategic growth plans. Employ support staff with specific experience working with end users from departments expected to grow. Their familiarity with clinical needs and ability to translate them into technical updates will equip users to accommodate growth without technology becoming a bottleneck.
3. Maintain Scaling Flexibility
Your support model should blend full-time internal talent with temporary external expertise. This hybrid approach offers multiple benefits—controlling costs during normal operations while providing surge capacity for major projects or upgrades. It also brings fresh perspectives and specialized expertise when needed, enriching your internal team’s knowledge base.
4. Consider Epic Quality Program Participation
If your organization pursues Epic’s Gold Stars or Honor Roll recognition, your support team needs the talent and bandwidth to achieve these goals. Aiming for 8 stars (better than average) or 10 stars (among the most highly-rated Epic clients) requires different resource commitments. Honor Roll participation, which measures factors contributing to end-user satisfaction, similarly demands specific support capabilities.
5. Identify Essential Certifications and Training
Proficiency in certain areas is non-negotiable for effective support. Ensure your team holds certifications and training in the Epic modules most relevant to your organization’s usage. Encourage cross-training and additional certifications to build versatility and depth. The breadth of Epic modules demands a team with complementary expertise rather than a collection of generalists.
6. Prioritize End-User Communication Skills
To some extent, clinicians dictate optimization priorities through their feedback and requests. Your support team needs strong communicators who can effectively listen to end users, translate clinical requirements into technical specifications, and clearly explain changes back to clinicians. Technical brilliance without communication skills ultimately fails to deliver user satisfaction.
Epic as a Service: The Evolution of EHR Support
The traditional model of owning and operating Epic infrastructure is evolving toward Epic as a Service—a model that combines the convenience of cloud solutions with the security of on-premises offerings.
Cloud-Based Advantages
Epic as a Service on platforms like HPE GreenLake provides a validated infrastructure that significantly reduces costs and risks. According to a 2019 HPE study, 65% of Epic customers already use HPE as their infrastructure vendor because of the seamless integration of storage, servers, software, and networking assets.
This approach creates opportunities to innovate while eliminating many infrastructure risks. The design and architectural principles support HIPAA compliance across administrative and technical safeguards, addressing security concerns that often accompany cloud transitions.
Continuous Support and Performance Optimization
One of the most compelling benefits of Epic as a Service is the shift from episodic to continuous support. Rather than your IT staff focusing on infrastructure maintenance, upgrades, and bug fixes, they can redirect their attention to initiatives that directly impact patient care.
With Epic as a Service, Virtelligence handles the burden of continual upgrades and optimization, ensuring your system maintains peak performance. This arrangement combines technological expertise with decades of healthcare IT experience, providing confidence that your Epic environment operates at its full potential.
Interoperability and Data Exchange
Cloud-enabled Epic platforms promote interoperability and data exchange, allowing systems to share health information securely. This capability ensures critical data reaches the right healthcare professionals at the right time, optimizing care and potentially reducing patient readmissions.
The interoperability advantages extend beyond your organization, enhancing connections with nearby health systems and potentially increasing referrals. The lower cost of EHR implementation represents another significant benefit of this model.
Final Thoughts: Maximizing Your Epic Investment with Virtelligence
Epic represents one of the largest technology investments a healthcare organization will make. Maximizing that investment requires not just initial implementation success but ongoing support excellence. Virtelligence approaches Epic support with a holistic strategy addressing healthcare’s unique needs combined with focused support tailored to your specific requirements.
Our Epic consultants bring both technical depth and healthcare context, understanding that technology exists to serve clinical and operational goals—not the reverse. We recognize that communication forms the foundation of successful Epic support, creating organic feedback loops that drive continuous improvement.
Whether you need comprehensive implementation assistance, targeted optimization, upgrade support, or specialized integration expertise, Virtelligence delivers the right resources at the right time. Our time-and-materials approach ensures cost-effective access to senior-level Epic expertise without unnecessary overhead.
The Epic journey isn’t a sprint—it’s a decade-long marathon that requires sustainable support strategies. Partner with Virtelligence to ensure your Epic investment delivers its full potential, enhancing patient care, improving operational efficiency, and positioning your organization for future success.
Ready to elevate your Epic support strategy? Contact Virtelligence today to discuss how our tailored approach can address your organization’s specific needs and challenges.
FAQs
What is the difference between Virtelligence’s time-and-materials model and traditional Epic support contracts?
Unlike traditional support contracts that lock you into fixed monthly fees regardless of actual usage, our time-and-materials approach means you only pay for the actual hours worked. This eliminates unnecessary project management costs and utilization fees for services you don’t use. Healthcare organizations typically experience 15-25% cost savings with this model, especially during periods between major projects or upgrades when support needs naturally decrease. The model provides complete transparency into your support investment while maintaining the flexibility to scale up resources during critical periods like go-lives or major upgrades. We find this approach particularly beneficial for organizations with fluctuating support needs throughout the fiscal year.
How does Virtelligence handle Epic system upgrades and what support is provided during the process?
Our comprehensive upgrade support begins with thorough planning and risk assessment, typically 3-4 months before your target upgrade date. We assist with upgrade planning, testing new functionality, preserving your customizations, training on new features, and post-upgrade optimization. Our methodology has evolved to minimize disruption—what once required extended downtime now often happens with minimal interruption to clinical operations. We provide specialized resources during the upgrade weekend itself, with comprehensive testing protocols and rollback procedures if needed. Most importantly, we focus on helping you leverage new features introduced in the upgrade, ensuring you realize the full value of Epic’s enhancements rather than simply maintaining your current functionality.
What security and compliance safeguards does Virtelligence implement for Epic environments?
We implement a multi-layered security approach that includes robust access controls, encryption protocols, comprehensive audit mechanisms, and regular vulnerability assessments. Our security measures align with HIPAA and HL7 standards while maintaining a balance between protection and clinical usability. Rather than treating security as a one-time implementation, we establish ongoing processes including regular security assessments, continuous monitoring for potential threats, guidance on implementing security patches, periodic user access reviews, and security incident response planning. We’ve found that integrating security considerations into your routine Epic support and maintenance prevents the costly remediation efforts that often follow security incidents identified too late.
How do you determine what kind of Epic support team our organization needs?
We assess your needs based on six key factors: your organization’s specific Epic-related clinical and operational requirements, your projected growth areas, the flexibility needed to scale support up or down, your participation in Epic quality programs like Gold Stars, the certifications and training most relevant to your Epic modules, and the communication skills needed to work effectively with your end users. Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach, we build a customized support model that blends internal and external resources to meet your specific challenges. The assessment typically takes 2-3 weeks and includes stakeholder interviews, system analysis, and review of your strategic goals to ensure our support aligns with your organization’s direction.
What advantages does the “Epic as a Service” model provide compared to traditional Epic infrastructure?
Epic as a Service transforms your EHR from a capital-intensive infrastructure investment to an operational expense with predictable costs. This cloud-enabled platform (like the HPE GreenLake solution we support) reduces both costs and risks through a validated infrastructure while maintaining HIPAA compliance. Key advantages include: shifting your IT team’s focus from maintenance to innovation, providing continual performance optimization without burdening internal resources, enhancing interoperability with neighboring health systems, potentially increasing referrals through improved connectivity, and lowering the total cost of EHR implementation by 20-30% in many cases. This model particularly benefits organizations seeking to minimize infrastructure management responsibilities while maximizing clinical and operational value from their Epic investment.
