Bizarro-world that doctors actually defend EPIC! They all complain about the ASP.NET 1.0 UI. It's just the convenience of viewing all patients from all hospitals in one virtual "chart" ;)
As a doctor, Epic is mediocre software that just happens to be less mediocre than most of the alternatives.
My biggest problem with Epic is that things are so heavily silo'ed by your job description (RN, MD, PharmD, etc.) and job context (without getting too deep into the weeds, it is a fact that the Epic implementation at my hospital does not allow anyone other than anesthesia personnel to see an intraoperative anesthetic record - not even the surgeon who performed the surgery (!); and that certain contexts do not allow a nurse who is running the schedule in one area to edit their case status board, which is a view of all cases in that area that allows them to see what's been done, what's left to be done, etc., - but if they switch context, they can change things, make their own boards, and then change back to the "proper" one and use the ones they've made).
It's more than just the job description, I believe many EHR vendors require people who use particular modules to be "certified" for that module. Obviously this leads to a silo effect where the information is available but one clinician may need to request another clinician to actually read the data to them.
If you need the anesthesiologist on call to come back to the hospital just so the surgeon can see what drugs were given during the case and what the vital signs looked like, your EMR is less useful than paper.
A loved one was inpatient for a few weeks at a local epic hospital/medical system and then a more specialized/academic hospital with a federated collection of cerner systems.
It’s a night and day difference. The GUI may be ugly, but the Epic implementations tend to be soup to nuts. Everyone, from the transporters moving patients to the doctors to the primary care providers to the patients know what’s going on in real time.
At the teaching hospital, they had awesome medical capability, but nobody had a clue what was going on. That leads to risks if you need care from multiple specialties.
I’m sure that it’s garbage enterprise software of course.
My biggest problem with Epic is that things are so heavily silo'ed by your job description (RN, MD, PharmD, etc.) and job context (without getting too deep into the weeds, it is a fact that the Epic implementation at my hospital does not allow anyone other than anesthesia personnel to see an intraoperative anesthetic record - not even the surgeon who performed the surgery (!); and that certain contexts do not allow a nurse who is running the schedule in one area to edit their case status board, which is a view of all cases in that area that allows them to see what's been done, what's left to be done, etc., - but if they switch context, they can change things, make their own boards, and then change back to the "proper" one and use the ones they've made).