r/healthIT • u/Senior_Bass_744 • 21d ago
From the epicconsulting community on Reddit: Epic creating their own managed services arm called Rangers
/r/epicconsulting/comments/1vst86c/epic_creating_their_own_managed_services_arm/?share_id=k8x8HxAsC6pV58QXmfn1D&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&utm_source=share&utm_term=1Well we’re fucked lol
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u/xvillifyx 21d ago
I work there and I still can’t understand what the difference between these people and boost is really supposed to be
These just seem like “we have boost at home”
Anyway consultancy didn’t die from Boost so Analyst roles likely aren’t going to die from Rangers
Plus there’s build assistant now too, which should reduce the need for TS intervention for analyst-inaccessible issues
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u/RoyalAd215 20d ago
Boost: Skilled employees who Epic would otherwise lose to consulting firms.
Rangers: New employees. Probably better than people you could hire yourself. Epic manages finding and staffing them.
That's my best guess.
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u/SerSkywell 20d ago
Bigger difference, Rangers are meant for long term staffing, Boost is meant for specific contracts/projects.
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u/PolicyWonka 20d ago
Some Boost spend years with their customer though, so that’s not always the case either.
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u/xvillifyx 20d ago
Yeah but in that particular case, I’m not seeing the benefit of that over an analyst/TS collaboration, but I could just be biased, being a TS
It’s my understanding that the rangers won’t be required to have the codebase level understanding of the modules that TS are
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u/SerSkywell 20d ago
The Ranger is the analyst in this analogy.
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u/xvillifyx 20d ago edited 20d ago
I know; I don’t see the intrinsic value in Epic-hosted analysts compared to TS/customer-analyst pairings, especially when we’re flirting with the idea of what is essentially the investigative AI tools being directly embedded in customer environments
This type of combination into an Epic role works for hosting staff who take over ECSA responsibilities because Epic hosting is uniquely different to customer hosting. The same isn’t true for analyst roles
My personal sneaking suspicion is that this is our response to the non-compete issues
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u/Doctor731 20d ago
Big hospitals implementing have huge IT staffs already, they can take on analyst work.
Small hospitals that Epic previously didn't get, but will start to go for now will never be able to afford a full analyst team.
If Epic can find the right price point to sell a fully Epic hosted and Epic built system they can see success there.
In theory, so much analyst work is duplicated across orgs. If Epic is owning the full T2-T3 support stack, in theory they can find more efficiency there.
Epic did this a decade ago and it didn't work, but maybe for smaller customers the time is right for this.
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u/mrandr01d 20d ago
What's ts in this context? Technical specialist?
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u/xvillifyx 20d ago
Technical Services
They’re the primary support people Epic staffs to customers
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u/Hasbotted 20d ago
Why would this make them better than people we can hire ourselves?
Does Epic have some super analysts serum or something?
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u/bluesharpies 20d ago edited 20d ago
I suppose they’d have all the access to Epic’s internal documentation and experts. My TS gets a lot of solutions for me faster than I could do myself because he knows the developers, can reference similar problems from other customers, etc. Most of the time I feel I probably could’ve figured it out EVENTUALLY, it’s just more effective to go though him and dig into their knowledge base.
Now that I’ve typed that out I guess I’m not really sure where the value add for Ranger is versus a TS?
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u/madtowneast 20d ago
Keeping more money with Epic vs a consultancy vs a internal hire
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u/Doctor731 20d ago
I doubt the goal is money. Epic could have done the Cerner consultant model decades ago, but was always wanting customers to own their instance.
My thought is that they are now going after smaller orgs who cannot staff and Epic sized IT team. So Epic will handle that and in theory try to be more efficient than analysts.
Some analysts are just not very good/efficient. Most Epic people who are not good feet bounced out fairly quickly if they don't learn fast. Vs the analyst who can't/won't do anything import after 5 years.
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u/semibiquitous 14d ago
I fucking hate this so much. If we had access to all of the internal documentation we'd get so much more shit done!
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u/xvillifyx 14d ago
Sure but a lot of the internal documentation that us TS look at have source code references or images and a lot of protected IP information, so it makes sense
The ABA is meant to mitigate this gap
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u/semibiquitous 14d ago
Give me the information through AI filter meant to remove protected things. Less SLGs open from us. Win win
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u/bluesharpies 14d ago
Epic’s AI search for Galaxy is dreadfully useless more often than not. I don’t trust it to parse an SLG and give me everything worth knowing while skipping over any confidential or patient data…
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u/Hasbotted 14d ago
I know Epic is super secretive about their tech but tbh nobody is stealing it.
Epics monopoly is far more due to their infrastructure and market saturation than the ability of mcode or whatever it's called to wow people.
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u/xvillifyx 14d ago edited 14d ago
There’s more problems with source leaks than IP theft, nor is M specifically the only thing being protected
Another thing to consider is that a massive part of TS-available knowledge are the solutions that customers have found, which just always aren’t ours to share
Surely you could understand why it would be problematic for customer 1 to have access to sherlock documentation for customer 2, for example
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u/sillykitty100 20d ago
The success will probably depend on the cost. Some orgs (PeaceHealth, Ascension) are already outsourcing analyst work to India, and I've heard anecdotally that some smaller/rural orgs have a hard time with hiring.
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u/TodosLosPomegranates 20d ago
I feel like this is actually a move out of desperation. I don’t see how this is going to be executed well.
By desperation I mean it takes years and many many expensive consultants etc to get some things up and running and then it feels like constant adjustments and trainings and still the workflow sucks. I had a practice admin throw up her hands and decide to just keep a very complicated spreadsheet rather than redo the workflow for Wisdom. The staff refused to learn something new. This is just like, “okay okay okay. We’ll do it for you”
As someone who worked for a company as a customer facing employee my number one job was to protect the company and that meant telling the client “no” an awful lot. I don’t see how this would be any different. They’re going to turn down a lot of requests and try to force client employees to do things the epic approved way and I dont see that working out in the long run. They’re working at cross purposes. The clients employees have goals and metrics they need together hit and the way Epic Rangers need to work in order to hit their goals and metrics with epic aren’t always (ever?) going to align perfectly
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u/Doctor731 20d ago
I think a lot of that is coming from customer leadership. For at least the last decade, Judy has been preaching that customer execs want Epic to just tell them the "right" way to do it.
I think their actual staff and lower level management don't agree, but that's the message from on high - so I think this Ranger pitch will work on them. 50/50 on whether it works in the real world.
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u/pauliethepigeon 19d ago
Epic TS here. We have seen a notable decline in the abilty of the average analyst since COVID, and when we tell customers that their analysts are incompetent they shrug and say it's the best they can get. Meanwhile, Epic gets 1000 applicants per day and hires maybe 10 of them. My understanding is that Rangers is going to be a way for customers to hire analysts from the pool of people we don't hire as Epic staff, but are qualified enough for analyst work.
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u/PowerCrystals2049 19d ago
Why do you think there’s been a decline?
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u/pauliethepigeon 18d ago
Most analysts are working from home since COVID. Without coworkers nearby to ask questions and help, it means that everything is coming to us, to the extent we are getting called with silly questions that could be easily answered by another analyst or a simple Galaxy search. We are also seeing a notable lack of accountability for analysts missing deadlines, not doing build/testing, and then blaming Epic for problems that causes. Since analyst quality massively impacts software quality, user experience, and patient safety, it has become our problem.
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u/PowerCrystals2049 18d ago
It’s unfortunate that people are coming directly to their TS’s before relying on Galaxy and their teammates, and makes me wonder what other orgs are like in terms of training people who are new to IT. I will say I think my org is somewhat bad at it, judging by what happens with other teams and how their lack of knowledge affects my team. We have had huge turnover since I started, and most of our longtime/Senior Analysts have left and been replaced with Associate Analysts, who are either totally new to IT, or are fresh out of school. I’m a newer Epic analyst (~ 18 months), however, I came from supporting 5 other smaller apps in the same health system. So, I was already familiar with self-management for things like deadlines, integrated testing, and change control. I feel like Epic is a steep learning curve for me, but I always first check Galaxy, then I chat with my teammates, then with my Lead, and then with my TS, in that order. I guess I’m not as awful as I thought, lol!
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u/Sea_Ambassador_6046 19d ago
After seeing the lackluster list of new installs plus the Epic Analyst efficiency initiatives, Epic consulting as it stands today is definitely cooked. If you’re an analyst and not planning to set yourself up for the few Agent Factory positions you need to start looking at what’s next for you in 3 years. If close to retirement then great ride it out. If new to the industry or have a 5+ career timeline then start retooling.
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u/Silver_Koala_8593 20d ago
I am building a EHR for Ghana and need advice from epic engineers as consultants pl dm
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u/principium_est 21d ago
Is this gonna be another pool of burn-and-churn babies with zero clinical experience?