In 2020, the American Medical Association found that nearly half of US physicians worked in independent medical groups. The time and resources required to run these businesses and meet evolving regulatory requirements, while also providing high-quality and community-driven care, can make moving to a new software system seem insurmountable. To streamline access to its industry-leading suite, Epic has released a new Software as a Service (SaaS) offering called Garden Plot.
“We’re excited to give more clinicians the opportunity to use Epic software,” said JP Heres, vice president of Garden Plot at Epic. “Garden Plot gives small, independent groups access to Epic—the software and third parties they need, plus the strength of our interoperability network—with minimal overhead. We handle hosting, support, and the configuration and rollout of updates so that providers can focus on their patients.”
Since 2007, health systems have used the Community Connect program to extend their Epic instances to nearby medical groups, which gain access to Epic software without the need to hire internal support teams or purchase infrastructure. Almost 40,000 providers use Epic through Connect, which Epic recommends to medical groups because it creates shared patient records with local hospitals. When Connect isn’t an option, Garden Plot gives groups an avenue to work with Epic directly.
“Garden Plot is currently available to primary and specialty care groups with more than 40 providers,” said Heres, “and our customers’ first wave of implementations will kick off in May 2022.”
Garden Plot delivers Epic’s “Best in KLAS” software to independent medical groups through a hosted and supported Software as a Service (SaaS) model, which includes integrated products from Availity, Biscom, Change Healthcare, Healthwise, Intelligent Medical Objects, Iron Bridge, Lyniate, OSG Billing Services, Solarity, Sphere, Surescripts, and Wolters Kluwer.
