[maxyme]

I interviewed at Epic Systems on-site and this article hits on basically everything I saw and felt. It's a very interesting, unique and weird place. But you also get a kind of weird vibe from it, it seems like a large facade.

A few things the article missed: The offices are shared by up to 3 people in offices designed to have 1 or 2. About half the company is akin to consultants where they fly out to a medical facility every Monday and fly back every Thursday. The vast majority of hires are new grads and turnover is very high. Oh and the article touched on this but the selling point for switching to Epic software is that Epic has nearly every person in the US's medical history in their databases (since their usage is so widespread) so if you sign up to use Epic you get the medical history with it.

If you ever interview there I recommend trying to schedule the flight in on a Thursday, your flight will have a transfer at MSP Airport and the next flight will be all Epic employees whom you can ask questions and they can answer honestly. Every employee I talked to on that flight said they planned on quitting soon and didn't like working there. This was several years ago.

[nradov]

Epic EHR is typically deployed as a separate instance on customer premises (not cloud SaaS). Epic customers don't automatically share patient charts with each other. However they can do so if desired through the Epic Everywhere product. And they can also share the same patient charts with other third-party EHRs through standards based APIs, although that requires configuration.

[all2]

> The offices are shared by up to 3 people in offices designed to have 1 or 2.

Yes and no. The campus is rapidly expanding to accommodate new hires.

> The vast majority of hires are new grads and turnover is very high.

Turnover is only high in implementation, other positions have veterans of 15 and 20 years.

> ... it seems like a large facade.

The look of the place does not translate well to the intensity and energy that many people bring to their work. There isn't time for most people to 'have fun'. They're working.

Source: a family member works at Epic.

[goda90]

Epic caught up on building new buildings and I don't think there is a single 3 person office on campus. The general trend is two to a window office, one to an indoor office. Higher tenure often can get solo window office now if they want it.

[solarkraft]

> Epic has nearly every person in the US's medical history in their databases (since their usage is so widespread) so if you sign up to use Epic you get the medical history with it

Why is this legal?

[benmaraschino]

While Epic produces the database/electronic health record system, the hospital or health system ultimately owns the data. AFAIK patient data don’t sit on Epic’s own servers outside of some research/pilot initiatives.

(Source: my personal experience working extensively with EHRs, including Epic products.)

[akiselev]

One of the first forms new patients sign at a hospital or private practice is a form releasing allowing their healthcare provider to request the patient's medical records from their other providers. Once that is filed, Epic provides a HIPPA compliant system to get those medical records from other linked databases.

[davycro]

Those records are protected by HIPAA which requires they be encrypted, and epic logs anytime a person views patient information.