Dive Brief:
- Standard & Poor's has lowered the credit rating for Winston-Salem, NC- based Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center' from AA- to A+, largely due to expenses incurred during its Epic installation.
- Hospital CFO Edward Chadwick reported that the EMR's impact on both finances and operations was greater than expected.
- Despite the downgrade, S&P has raised the hospital's overall financial outlook from "negative" to "stable," noting that analysts expect the hospital's finances to rebound in 2014.
Dive Insight:
Generally speaking, CIOs don't get fired for buying an industry-leading Epic EMR. In this case, however, the hospital was hit so hard by the flawed Epic rollout -- the facility has estimated that the hospital lost $26.6 million due to Epic problems -- that the CIO resigned earlier this year. Popular or not, Epic installs clearly aren't for the unprepared.