A concerned reader left a voicemail for The Electric on March 1, saying that Benefis Health System had terminated hundreds of employees that day and brought in 600 outsiders to replace them. We checked with Benefis and that’s not the case. There are about 650 people on site at Benefis, but they are not replacing Benefis employees, nor did the hospital terminate hundreds of employees last week. Benefis has been working for about a year in preparation of transitioning to a new records management system, Epic, and the new system went live on March 1. Benefis closes some beds for nursing shortage Kaci Husted, Benefi’s vice president of system business development and communications, told The Electric that Epic brought in about 650 people to help support the transition and they began arriving in town on Feb. 29. Those Epic employees will be in town for about three weeks helping work out any kinks in the transition, Husted said. They are not replacing any Benefis staff, she said. The new Epic system tied many other Benefis systems together and Husted said that there were some issues with data flowing properly through the new system but with the Epic personnel on site, they were able to troubleshoot those issues quickly as they were discovered. Benefis has been preparing for the transition for about a year and hired additional permanent IT employees for the project, Husted said. Benefis didn’t have space on campus for their employees working on the transition to be in one place, so the hospital rented space downtown for the team. They’ve been in that space for about a year and Husted said they’ll be staying in that downtown office for the near-term. Husted said the new Epic system will be better for patients as it will consolidate bills that previously came from different providers within the Benefis system and will have a patient portal with more capabilities, streamlining processes for patients and the hospital. Epic is the records management system in use by a number of major hospitals nationwide, Husted said.