Epic just announced the largest native AI rollout in U.S. healthcare history, over 100 AI features embedded directly into clinical workflows. It's an impressive feat that will undoubtedly transform how clinicians work inside their EMR.

But here's what Epic's announcement doesn't address: the chaos happening outside your EMR walls.

Epic's AI Revolution: Impressive, But Incomplete

Epic's new AI capabilities are genuinely groundbreaking. They're automating clinical documentation, drafting patient responses, and streamlining prescription orders. By 2025, their AI will pull patient data automatically when doctors respond to MyChart messages. It's already saving nurses 30 seconds per message at Mayo Clinic.

The problem? All of this innovation focuses on what happens after patients are already in your system, scheduled, and cleared for care.

The $24 Billion Gap No EMR Can Fill

Here's a sobering reality for surgery centers: hospitals are losing $24 billion in revenue each year from patient no-shows and surgery day cancellations nationwide. But that's just the beginning of the financial hemorrhaging.

The true cost extends far beyond cancellations. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, surgical delays cost hospitals $1,700 per minute, meaning a single one-hour delay due to missing patient records results in $102,000 in losses. High-value procedures face the steepest losses, with neurosurgery cancellations costing $5,962 per case and urology cancellations costing $4,758 per case according to research from Tulane University Medical Center.

Add to this the $39 billion hospitals spend annually on administrative burden related to data management and record-keeping (American Hospital Association), and the scope of the external communication crisis becomes clear. With 14% of elective procedures cancelled on the scheduled surgery day and 59.7% of these cancellations being preventable, the financial impact is staggering.

One study found that 62.1% of cancellation costs were due to avoidable reasons related to poor communication and coordination, exactly the external workflow problems that Epic's internal AI cannot address.

Epic's AI can optimize your documentation workflow, but no EMR, whether Epic, Cerner, or any other system, can extract critical information from that blurry fax from the referring cardiologist, identify missing lab results needed for anesthesia clearance, automatically request updated insurance authorizations from external providers, generate patient timelines from scattered external documents, or flag incomplete referral packets before they derail your schedule.

While EMR AI perfects your internal workflows, patients are still getting cancelled because the EKG never arrived, the H&P is incomplete, or insurance authorization expired.

The External Communication Crisis

Surgery centers live in a complex ecosystem where success depends on seamless coordination with referring physicians using different EMRs (or no EMR), insurance companies with antiquated fax requirements, diagnostic centers with varying communication protocols, and patients juggling multiple provider relationships.

Epic's AI speaks fluent "internal workflow," but the external world still communicates in faxes, PDFs, phone calls, and Post-it notes. This is where revenue dies and staff burnout accelerates.

Where Purpose-Built AI Makes the Difference

While Epic optimizes clinical encounters, specialized platforms like Highpass are purpose-built to solve the external coordination challenge.

• Instead of asking: "How do we document this encounter better?"

• Highpass asks: "How do we ensure this encounter can happen at all?"

The Pre-Visit Revenue Protection Play

Epic's AI helps document the visit after it happens, while Highpass AI prevents cancellations before they happen by front-loading requirements gathering and ensuring all necessary documentation flows smoothly into your system before patients arrive.

Real-World Impact

Consider this scenario: a referring cardiologist sends a surgical referral via fax. Epic's AI won't:

• Automatically extract the patient's cardiac risk factors

• Identify that the required stress test results are missing

• Generate a secure request back to the cardiologist

• Track the response and alert your team when documents arrive

This is exactly what Highpass does, turning chaotic external communication into organized, automated workflows, regardless of your EMR system.

Integration Without Disruption

The beauty of purpose-built solutions? They enhance any EMR investment without disrupting it.

As an EHR-agnostic platform, Highpass integrates seamlessly with Epic, Cerner, athenahealth, and every other EMR as a communication layer that handles external workflows. Your EMR's AI optimizes internal processes while Highpass ensures external coordination flows seamlessly into your system, regardless of which system you use.

It's not about replacing your EMR, it's about completing your technology stack.

Epic AI vs Highpass AI

Complementary Solutions for Complete Healthcare Workflow Coverage

The Strategic Bottom Line

Epic's 100+ AI features represent a massive leap forward for healthcare technology. But they're solving the "internal optimization" problem, not the "external coordination" crisis.

Surgery centers need both:

• Epic's AI for clinical workflow optimization

• Purpose-built solutions like Highpass for external communication automation

The question isn't: Whether Epic's AI revolution will transform healthcare, it absolutely will.

The question is: While your EMR perfects what happens inside your system, who's protecting your revenue from the chaos outside?

Ready to fill the gaps Epic can't reach? Request a demo to see how Highpass’ AI-powered communication platform prevents cancellations, reduces burnout, and protects revenue by automating the external workflows that Epic's AI doesn't touch.

Sources:

1. MedAux Research. (2024). Surgery cancellation revenue impact analysis: $24B annual industry loss.

2. Journal of the American Medical Association. (2018). The cost of surgical delays in US hospitals: $1,700 per minute.

3. American Hospital Association. (2020). Regulatory overload: $39B annual administrative burden assessment.

4. Fierce Healthcare. (2012). Hospitals lose millions from cancelled surgeries. Research from Tulane University Medical Center.

5. Calcium Health. (2024). More than Just Annoying, Surgery Cancellations Are Costly and Largely Preventable.

6. Maimaiti, N., Rahimi, A., & Aghaie, L. A. (2016). Economic impact of surgerycancellation in a general hospital, Iran. Ethiopian Journal of Health Development,30(2), 92-95.