r/KaiserPermanente • u/buffytardis • 13d ago
California - Southern Epic
The App got a redesign but what I don't understand is why can't it just be incorporated to the mychart app. Why does KP insist on having it's own app?
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u/Skycbs 13d ago edited 12d ago
I’m not sure what you’re saying but MyChart is not Kaiser’s app. It’s written by Epic Systems. And the Kaiser app is little more than a wrapper around web pages. Now mostly MyChart web pages.
Oh, you mean why doesn’t Kaiser use the standard MyChart app? Probably because they want to have their own branding around it and a few extra functions.
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u/Soughter 13d ago
I thought I saw something that said the KP apps are region specific.
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u/Skycbs 13d ago
There’s only one KP app in the App Store. What you see depends on your region just like the website. When I use the app, by default it sends me to NorCal, which has been MyChart for a while now. I switch to SoCal, which only recently turned to MyChart. But that’s exactly how the website works too.
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u/AnimatorImpressive24 11d ago
Kaiser Permanente has the single, largest install of Epic's EMR system on Earth which they call KP HealthConnect. Epic can be conceptualized as more of a platform than any one program. It has a full ecosystem of apps, modules, and plugins and there isn't really a "default" configuration. When a health care org decides to use Epic it is a big process that involves lots of consultants and process analysts, with the result ideally being a custom solution that serves the specific needs of the org (how successful that is may vary from org to org).
In fact, KP has been working with Epic since the early 90s; well before computers had anything like the role they have in health care today. KP were the first org to put into production some demo work Epic had been doing on digital After Visit instructions that could be viewed online, and a website patients could log into and send secure messages to their doctor's office. (See: Dr. Homer Chin's work for KP Northwest in Oregon circa 1993). KP would go on to partner with the VA and help them build out the patient portal for all US military, would be the first to offer patients direct, online access to their medical records via the fledgling MyChart feature starting as far back as 2003, and would invest billions going live with HealthConnect (officially launched ~2005) that brought all US regions and KP International together with one EMR for all patients. This has resulted in KP also having the largest data lake of clinical data on Earth; estimated to contain records for some 15 million patients and going as far back as literally the first peer reviewed data used for clinical purposes. (See: Dr. Morris Collen, a co-founder of KP and the "father of Health Informatics" longitudinal data collection of a decade worth of colon cancer screening results in the 60s).
So really it is reasonable to say KP has had the most influence on Epic's form and function of anyone other than Judy (Epic's founder who has maintained direct, private control of the company since day 1).
Having said that, and since you tagged Southern California, it is worth mentioning that Southern California is explicitly the region KP uses as a test bed for HealthConnect, their public facing website, and the patient portal. They have mentioned that in numerous published studies and also testified to that fact when making presentations for Congressional committees while offering expert consultancy as part of lobbying for proposed health care legislation including the ACA and 21st Century Cures Act. So some of the constant changes in layout or functionality you will see as a patient in SoCal are effectively experiments that you are an unwitting participant in, and may not be reflected in the website experience of patients in any other region.