DCMC finalizes preparations on its ‘biggest IT investment’ to date

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

January 26, 2026

DOOR COUNTY – Having undergone three or four “major IT upgrades” throughout his 20-year tenure at the Door County Medical Center (DCMC), CEO Brian Stephens said the hospital’s forthcoming transition to Epic electronic health record (EHR) software is going to be “by far the biggest – and it’s exciting.”

Stephens – who has previously served as the hospital’s patient financial services director and chief financial officer – said DCMC has considered “a switch to Epic” for more than five years.

“The first time we evaluated it [in 2019], we decided to stay with MEDITECH – the system that we’ve been on since 1999,” he said.

Stephens said over the years, and several major upgrades to its current EHR, every time DCMC leadership considered switching to Epic, MEDITECH improved.

“Anytime we got to the point where we felt like MEDITECH was falling behind the rest of the market or the rest of the industry, they would bring out an upgrade that would really improve things,” he said. “From that standpoint, we were certainly happy using MEDITECH…, and as a small, rural facility, [it was] pretty unique to have control over your own electronic health record [system]. So, that was why we stuck with it for so long.”

However, Stephens said eventually, sticking with MEDITECH was no longer an option for DCMC.

“What’s happened in the market – nationally and certainly in Wisconsin – is that nearly every other health system is on Epic,” he said. “The big three [EHR systems companies] in the United States are Epic, Cerner and MEDITECH – but in Wisconsin, because Epic is a Wisconsin[-based] company, most of the health systems are on Epic.”

Chief Administrative Officer Erick Schrier said DCMC is “one of the last hospitals in Northeast Wisconsin not utilizing Epic.”

This, Stephens said, not only created procedural hurdles for DCMC’s staff and providers attempting inter-hospital collaboration, but healthcare roadblocks for patients as well.

“Over time, as interoperability became more important, and with patients, [for example], wanting to share their records between [their] primary care [provider and perhaps] a specialist down in Green Bay… it just became harder and harder to [do that] and put tools in the hands of the patients so they could help control their own health care,” he said.

Stephens said the “tipping point” for DCMC came roughly two years ago.

“We said, ‘You know what, it’s time – we have to make a change,’” he said. “We [were] swimming upstream [investing in] a different electronic health record [system] than everybody else who we partner with and in various ways. And, at the end of the day, it was hurting our patients as well – so we decided to make the investment.”

Return on a ‘major’ investment

Though the official transition doesn’t take place until Feb. 7, Stephens said he’s already received positive feedback from both providers and patients on the new EHR.

“There are a number of patients who already have specialists down in Green Bay, so they’re excited to be on a consolidated record [system],” he said. “What that means is they’ll be able to use the [Epic] MyChart app and have their records from Door County Medical Center and their records from any of the four hospitals in Green Bay, all in the same app.”

Beyond having records conveniently stored in one accessible location via the MyChart app, Stephens said DCMC’s Epic adoption also allows for online appointment scheduling.

“Patients have been able to request appointments online with us, but they’ve never been able to schedule themselves for appointments online,” he said. “You can schedule a lot of things online these days, so being able to schedule a medical appointment should just be a given at this point. So, we’re excited to be able to bring that to our patients, as well as enhanced communication tools.”

Investing in Epic at DCMC, HSHS Wisconsin Market President and CEO Bob Erickson said, results in a direct, positive impact on the quality of care patients receive – not just within DCMC, but across the Northeast region.

“One of the most meaningful outcomes of this transition is what it enables for patients across Northeast Wisconsin – a shared Epic platform improves continuity of care, strengthens care coordination and supports more seamless information sharing when patients receive care across organizations,” he said. “That translates directly into safer and more connected care experiences.”

Stephens said DCMC care professionals will gain many of the same benefits patients enjoy as a result of the transition, but from the provider perspective.

“Epic can be accessed remotely [and] on the provider’s phones, so if they’re not in the office, need to look up a patient or respond to a request remotely, they’ll be able to do that,” he said. “Probably most importantly, [however, is] getting the patient records consolidated on one system.”

Currently, Stephens said providers and their care teams spend quite a bit of their time doing “chart prep” ahead of patients’ visits

“They’re looking up records from outside organizations [and], oftentimes, printing those out [and] putting them in a folder so the physician can review those before the patient comes in,” he said. “All of that’s good stuff – we want our physicians to be prepared in advance of the visit – but when we go on Epic, a lot of that chart prep will go away because they’ll have the entire record in one system, accessible right there on their laptop or on their phone.”

Stephens said one of the primary reasons DCMC was “hesitant” to switch to Epic was because of the increased cost.

“As a small rural hospital, we do have to be very careful about how we invest our funds,” he said. “So, for years, we tried to kind of avoid that expense.”

However, Stephens said in implementing Epic, the return on investment is in the time it saves providers – “particularly in the clinic setting.”

“We definitely think there are going to be some cost savings that result from this [that are] going to help us offset the price tag,” he said.

Piloting new features

Stephens said Hospital Sisters Health System’s (HSHS) partial ownership of DCMC helped the hospital offset some of the cost of Epic’s software.

“We’re 40% owned by Hospital Sisters Health System,” he said. “So, rather than go out and try to procure Epic on our own, what we’ve been able to do is purchase HSHS’s instance of Epic.”

In purchasing its Epic instance, Stephens said DCMC worked directly with HSHS’s IT and project management teams to prepare for next month’s launch.

“Over the last year, it’s been a robust process – a lot of work [and] a lot of man hours have gone into it,” he said. “But, rather than it being a completely new build, we are taking their instance of Epic and implementing that at DCMC.”

However, Stephens said DCMC’s Epic system won’t be an exact copy of HSHS’s – as the two organizations are using the center’s software transition as an opportunity to “pilot” a few new features.

As a Medicare-designated critical access hospital, Stephens said DCMC employs a billing technique called “Method II.”

“Method II billing [means] you can bill physician charges out of a critical access hospital,” he said. “We’ve been doing this for years, and we’ve had it automated through MEDITECH. HSHS has done Method II billing before, but they’ve never had that automated.”

So, in implementing HSHS’s instance of Epic, Stephens said DCMC has also helped introduce automated Method II billing across the organization’s healthcare facilities.

“We have it all set up, we’re ready to go and that’s going to benefit the entire HSHS system,”  he said.

Another patient-focused improvement, currently unique to DCMC, Stephens said, is Epic’s lab module, Beaker.

“We will be the first HSHS facility to go up on Beaker,” he said. “The rest of the HSHS system will benefit from that and will eventually all go up on the Beaker platform for lab services.”

Stephens said for the two weeks leading up to the Feb. 7 launch, 70 support technicians are on site at DCMC helping staff and physicians.

“Some of those will be HSHS employees, some of them will be external consultants who have been hired and for the lab build – because it’s new even to HSHS – [and we’ll] actually have Epic staff here on site helping with the lab implementation. It’s really a team approach [and] a great effort.”

Wisconsin-based health care, worldwide impact

Stephens said DCMC is looking forward to partnering with Epic – an employee-owned medical software developer based in South Central Wisconsin.

“People are excited about it,” he said.

Currently serving the EHR needs of 325 million patients worldwide – per DCMC’s press release – Stephens said he wonders if Wisconsinites are aware of the economic impact Epic has on the dairy state and beyond.

“I don’t know that the average Wisconsin resident realizes what a gem we have in Epic as a company here in Wisconsin,” he said. “It is the worldwide leader in electronic health record [systems], it was started at the University of Wisconsin-[Madison and] it’s still privately held with very close ties to the university.”

Now, mere days away from implementing DCMC’s “biggest IT investment” to date, Stephens said he’s excited for the hospital to play a role in Epic’s state-, nation- and worldwide impact.

“So many of our employees and our physicians have been trained on Epic…, so we have a number of employees who are really excited about this implementation – knowing they’ll be able to go back to Epic, a software they appreciated,” he said. “Everybody knows it’s a big change, but I think we’re all ready to jump in now and get it done.”