For patients and providers, electronic health records (EHR) are a crucial component of effectively delivering care. EHRs provide an easily accessible digital version of a patient’s paper chart information and serve to deliver vital information to clinicians. However, there are nine primary EHR systems in use across UPMC’s footprint, creating challenges to accessing information for both patients and clinicians.
That’s where the UPMC Bridges initiative comes in.
UPMC Bridges is a systemwide transformative effort to enhance patient care delivery, streamline operations, and upgrade the UPMC experience. The goal is to transition all EHRs currently in use across the system to one unified EHR platform powered by Epic. Once implemented, this move will enable more efficient care delivery for providers and care teams, allowing UPMC to continue expanding access to care, and create a more seamless digital experience for patients.
Robert Bart, MD, chief medical information officer (CMIO), UPMC, was a featured guest speaker at the Sept. 26 All Hands meeting to discuss the Bridges project and its progress thus far. While Dr. Bart is a key leader for the project, UPMC Enterprises is well-represented with Brent Burns and Jeanne Cunicelli in leadership roles within the project.
Prior to his position at UPMC, Dr. Bart served as the first CMIO for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and chief medical officer at Cerner Corp. His extensive experience in electronic health record management enables him to skillfully spearhead this massive initiative at UPMC.
Along with the nine primary EHRs, the system also uses a portfolio of 3,000+ applications and 300+ third-party software products, resulting in annual costs of more than $110 million. UPMC hopes to reconcile these issues through an integration with Epic.
Epic is a comprehensive EHR platform widely used in the health care industry. Its main function is to assist providers in managing patient records, streamlining workflows, and improving overall quality of care. This platform will benefit patients, clinical care delivery, enterprise data and analytics, security, operational efficiency, and connectivity and growth.
Bridges has made significant strides since its inception in 2023, and is about halfway to its first expected go-live wave in late 2025, followed by the second wave in early 2026. More than 1,000 UPMC staff have served on councils and workgroups that have made thousands of governance decisions that are essential to a smooth transition as the build phase of the project nears completion. Work in 2025 will include testing and training/readiness activities as we move toward go-live dates.
This project will have a significant impact on the entire system, with more than 90,000 employees to be trained on the Epic platform. With this much impact, Dr. Bart noted the careful consideration by governance teams for implementing training models, and for decisions in content, access, data conversion, policy, timeline, and more.
Dr. Bart opened the floor to questions from the Enterprises group, highlighting the impact this transition will have on patients and their access, as well as the critical need for training in order to properly implement the Epic system.
His advice to the Enterprises group for the future of Bridges is to treat it as a “living laboratory experience” – be extremely forward thinking in working within this care delivery model and collaborate with clinicians to see what needs we can best support.
If you are interested in learning more, search “UPMC Bridges” on Infonet and join the UPMC Bridges Viva Engage community.
In addition to his work with EHRs, Dr. Bart is a practicing critical care medicine physician at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, overseeing technologies including telemedicine and remote monitoring to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of patient care. Dr. Bart received his medical degree from the University of Hawaii, then completed a pediatrics residency, a pediatric chief residency, and pediatric critical care fellowship at Duke University Medical Center.
