Epic is the largest electronic health record (EHR) system in the United States, used by hospitals and clinics to manage nearly every aspect of patient care. It holds 42.3% of the acute care hospital market as of 2024, and the “Epic experience” refers to how patients, doctors, nurses, and administrators interact with this interconnected software platform on a daily basis. Whether you’ve logged into a patient portal called MyChart or heard your doctor mention “Epic” during a visit, you’re encountering one piece of a much larger system.
What Epic Actually Does
At its core, Epic is a digital infrastructure that replaces paper charts, fax machines, phone-based scheduling, and disconnected billing systems with a single integrated platform. The main product, EpicCare, handles both inpatient (hospital) and outpatient (clinic) care. But Epic isn’t one piece of software. It’s a collection of specialized modules, each designed for a specific part of healthcare.
Some of the more notable ones: ASAP manages emergency and urgent care workflows. Beacons supports oncology teams. Radiant handles radiology scheduling, tracking, and reporting. OpTime coordinates surgery and anesthesia. Willow automates pharmacy workflows for ordering, dispensing, and charging medications. Stork supports obstetric care from prenatal visits through delivery and postpartum. Cupid handles cardiovascular documentation and referrals. Beaker integrates lab results directly into the medical record, eliminating the need for separate lab software.
The result is that when a hospital runs on Epic, a patient’s lab results, imaging, medications, surgical notes, and billing all live in one connected system. A cardiologist can see what the emergency department documented hours earlier without picking up a phone.
The Patient Experience: MyChart
For most patients, the Epic experience means MyChart, a secure website and mobile app that connects directly to your medical record. MyChart lets you view test results, read after-visit summaries, manage appointments, update personal information like medications and allergies, and check in electronically before visits. Many health systems also use it to launch video visits. In KLAS Research’s 2024 rankings, Epic’s MyChart scored 90.1 out of 100 in the patient portals category, earning a Best in KLAS designation.
That said, MyChart’s usefulness depends on what your hospital has turned on. Features are typically rolled out in stages. A large study at a community hospital found that early launches included viewing discharge summaries and test results, with appointment management and video visits added later. Messaging between patients and providers wasn’t always available at launch, and that was one of the most requested features, with hundreds of patients specifically asking for chat or messaging capabilities.
Patients in that study said they valued MyChart most for preparing for appointments and revisiting notes from their care team after visits, which helped with information recall. The most common frustrations were limited access to certain records. Patients wanted consultation notes, medical images, emergency department results, and more comprehensive medical histories. After-visit summaries were sometimes seen as too brief, since they didn’t always include the provider’s full chart notes, leaving patients with an incomplete picture of their care plan. Many also wanted the ability to share records with family members or link their MyChart to records at other hospitals.
The Clinician Experience
For doctors and nurses, the Epic experience centers on Hyperspace, the desktop application where most clinical work happens. Clinicians use it to review patient histories, write notes, place orders, view lab results, and communicate with colleagues. It’s also where they manage their InBasket, essentially a clinical inbox filled with patient messages, test results that need review, prescription refills, and administrative tasks.
Epic also offers mobile apps for clinicians who aren’t sitting at a workstation. Haiku (for smartphones) and Canto (for tablets) provide secure access to patient charts, schedules, patient lists, lab and imaging results, and messaging. Clinicians can search for patients, review medications and allergies, see admission notes and vitals, and spot abnormal results immediately. Canto goes further, allowing providers to complete clinical notes using SmartPhrases (pre-built text shortcuts) and integrated speech-to-text through Dragon. There’s also Epic Monitor, a tool that condenses the most critical parts of an inpatient’s chart into a streamlined view for quick review during rounding.
The practical effect is that a physician rounding in the hospital, sitting in clinic, or checking results from home can access the same patient information across devices. Mobile ordering capabilities mean a doctor who gets a critical lab result at 10 p.m. can place orders without driving back to the hospital.
How Hospitals Measure Their Epic Performance
Installing Epic is one thing. Using it well is another, and Epic has a formal program for measuring the difference. The Gold Stars program rates hospitals and health systems on how effectively they’ve adopted and configured Epic’s features. It evaluates two dimensions: configuration (whether the available features are properly set up) and usage (whether clinicians and staff are actually using them).
A Level 10 designation, the highest tier, indicates that an organization has put EHR features to work across its entire system in ways that improve clinician efficiency, patient experience, and financial performance. The program is considered a benchmark of operational excellence in the Epic community. Achieving high marks requires not just buying the software but training staff, optimizing workflows, and continuously refining how the system is used.
Data Sharing Across Health Systems
One of Epic’s most significant features is Care Everywhere, a network that allows different Epic-running organizations to exchange patient records. When you visit a hospital that uses Epic and your primary care clinic also uses Epic (or a connected system), your records can follow you. This is especially useful in emergency situations where a patient arrives unconscious or unable to recall their medical history. In practice, adoption varies. A study of one health system’s emergency department found that Care Everywhere was used in about 1.5% of ED encounters over six months, primarily exchanging records with six other health systems in the surrounding region.
AI Tools Entering the Epic Workflow
Epic is integrating artificial intelligence directly into its platform, with the most prominent example being a tool called Art. Designed for clinicians, Art works as an AI scribe. During a patient visit, conversations are recorded through Epic’s mobile apps (Haiku and Canto), then transcribed using Microsoft’s Dragon Ambient AI technology. Epic’s system takes that transcription and generates a draft clinical note along with visit documentation.
Art also anticipates what a clinician will need for a given visit, preparing tailored patient summaries in advance. Actions taken during the encounter, like placing orders or adding documentation, go into a “shopping cart” that the clinician reviews and signs at the end of the visit rather than documenting in real time. The goal is to reduce the hours clinicians spend typing notes after hours, a problem widely known in healthcare as “pajama time.”
Where Epic Ranks in the Industry
Epic consistently dominates industry rankings. In the 2024 Best in KLAS awards, which survey healthcare professionals about the software they use, Epic won top honors in over a dozen categories. It earned Best in KLAS for large and medium acute care EHRs, ambulatory EHR for both health-system-owned and independent practices, patient portals, telehealth, hospital billing for large and medium facilities, practice management, clinical communications, pharmacy inventory management, and IV workflow management. Scores ranged from the high 80s to 93.2 out of 100.
In terms of market footprint, Epic added 176 multispecialty hospitals and nearly 29,400 beds in 2024 alone, bringing its acute care market share to 42.3%, up from 39.1% the year before. Its closest competitor, Oracle Health (formerly Cerner), continues to lose ground. For patients and clinicians at hospitals weighing EHR options, this market dominance means Epic is increasingly likely to be the system you encounter regardless of where you receive care.