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December 16, 2023

Samaritan Health Services empowers caregivers and patients with Epic on Azure

To better serve its community of employees and patients, Samaritan Health Services decided to shift to cloud-based management of its electronic health records (EHR) and data systems. After successfully implementing an IT disaster recovery solution, the organization moved its Epic production environment to Microsoft Azure, helping to modernize EHR management, gain agility and flexibility in managing patient data, and cut back the cost of running on-premises datacenters.

Samaritan Health Services

“Taking Epic into a cloud environment lets us be nimble and brings speed to implementation of tools that truly impact our communities.”

Sonney Sapra, Senior Vice President and CIO, Samaritan Health Services

Caring for the community

Samaritan Health Services, a nonprofit healthcare organization, takes a community-focused approach to healthcare, providing broad access to high-quality services in a cost-effective manner. Created in the late 1990s when community leaders in three Oregon counties united several health services into a single system, Samaritan Health prioritizes cooperation over competition. “We truly live and breathe our mission of ‘Building Healthier Communities Together,’” says Sonney Sapra, Senior Vice President and CIO at Samaritan Health Services and Samaritan Health Plans. “We live in the communities where we serve, and our families, neighbors, and friends are patients and members.”

With its community in mind, Samaritan Health wanted to be even more patient-centric in its decision making and offerings. Gaining easier access to the right data and minimizing costs were key factors, so the organization decided to move to cloud-based management of its health records and data systems. “We are in the fourth year of a multi-year migrating strategy that includes exiting our management of an on-premises datacenter,” says Scott Morris, AVP, IS Infrastructure at Samaritan Health Services. “Financial sustainability was a big motivator. Our health system supports a lot of rural areas and has a payer mix with a majority of Medicare and Medicaid payers, making managing the financial margin crucial.” The migration also falls in line with Samaritan Health’s desire to have its electronic health records (EHR) collocated with other workloads.

In 2022, the organization partnered with Sapphire Health, an EHR cloud migration consulting firm, to deploy Epic on Azure disaster recovery (DR) through Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. When the implementation was successful, Samaritan Health partnered with Sapphire Health to move its Epic production environment to Microsoft Azure.

Eliminating datacenter management

With the Epic DR deployment, Samaritan Health saw savings on datacenter hosting and maintenance expenses and laid the groundwork for shifting to Epic on Azure. “We wanted to get out of the datacenter business because it’s been challenging to have our own,” says Morris. “Maintaining a datacenter is not a core competency of a healthcare system.” 

The organization began the migration in early 2023 with an aggressive timeline of bringing production into Azure by June. “We utilized our partner, Sapphire, and they were well prepared with an understanding of our environment to jump in and help us achieve that goal,” Morris says. “With the help of Sapphire and the teams at Microsoft, we had a successful implementation and saw improvements as soon as we went online. We’ve benefited from the ability to scale our environment based on demand, rather than on having to add servers or conduct expensive hardware refreshes.”

Sapphire’s deep experience with EHR, and in deploying EHR workloads on Azure, resulted in Samaritan Health completing the project in under six months.

“We have a lot of control over our healthcare data now, allowing us to make better decisions on what we integrate with and how.”

Scott Morris, AVP, IS Infrastructure, Samaritan Health Services

Empowering caregivers and enhancing patient outcomes

Upon full implementation in June 2023, Samaritan Health immediately saw encouraging results in key metrics—response time improved by 20 percent, while the response time score increased by 10 points, indicating a better-performing system. “Those were both very positive developments,” Morris says. From a financial perspective, the cost of Azure matches up to what the organization forecasted in advance, allowing the organization to stick to its budget more easily. “With the healthcare industry going through a lot of challenges, financial sustainability is a key point. We continue to believe that Epic on Azure is the best choice for us.”

Digital transformation brings new opportunities and capabilities for empowering caregivers to better serve patients. Soon, Samaritan Health hopes to layer AI applications that can drive efficiencies and patient-centric care, along with integrations with solutions within the Microsoft ecosystem. “We have a lot of control over our healthcare data now, allowing us to make better decisions on what we integrate with and how,” says Morris. 

The move to Azure allows Samaritan Health to become quicker and more efficient in how it deploys new applications and enhancements. “We look forward to working more with the integration of Epic, Nuance DAX Copilot, Microsoft AI, and the tools that will allow our organization to address provider burnout and improve communication between provider and patient or member,” says Sapra. “By using automated workflows, we can get the right data to the right person at the right time to make key health decisions.”

The new infrastructure also improves how Samaritan Health manages its cloud environment, allowing it to change its approach to hiring and training IT staff. “Typically, in healthcare IT we staff in a very vertical format, with experts that service certain applications and are the face for those applications or areas of support,” Sapra explains. “Now that we’re running Epic on Azure, we can transition to a horizontal staffing approach to the team—using AI and machine learning to help across applications and areas of service.”

As the future unfolds, Samaritan Health IT leaders are excited about using additional Microsoft technologies including Azure AI services with Epic. “Generative AI is being used for patient communications through Epic MyChart and will be used in many other tools to make the patient or member and provider experiences better,” Sapra says. “Taking Epic into a cloud environment lets us be nimble and brings speed to the implementation of tools that truly impact our communities. We are on the brink of some great and transformational changes in healthcare delivery and really feel like we’re in good hands with Epic and Microsoft.”

Find out more about Samaritan Health Services on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Epic is a trademark of Epic Systems Corporation.

“We are on the brink of some great and transformational changes in healthcare delivery and really feel like we’re in good hands with Epic and Microsoft.”

Sonney Sapra, Senior Vice President and CIO, Samaritan Health Services

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