Beyond Epic: The New Layer of Patient Engagement

We live in a world of constantly rising standards. People expect more, and they expect it faster. At the same time, our lives are fuller than ever, and each day we deal with packed schedules and growing lists of obligations. With busy lives, taking care of ourselves becomes more difficult—and more important.  

But healthcare has a problem. A 2025 review of administrative burden in U.S. healthcare found that patient administrative burden undercuts timely access to care and can even lead patients to abandon care altogether.  

Our healthcare systems struggle to keep pace with the lives of patients and their expectations. Patients expect personalized and seamless healthcare experiences. And why not? These are the types of experiences they have outside of healthcare.  

Even best-of-class Electronic Healthcare Records systems (EHR) struggle to meet patient expectations. EHRs need to modernize engagement with AI systems and tools. Adding AI ensures that the people who rely on their doctors and hospitals to keep them healthy are being served in the best ways possible. 

Better patient engagement means better healthcare.  

Why EHRs Alone Can’t Solve the Engagement Puzzle 

According to a recent Becker’s report, even best-of-class EHRs like Epic struggle to keep up with patient expectations. While customers praised Epic’s functionality, many are supplementing their EHRs with third-party tools. More than one-third of organizations told Becker’s that Epic is unable to meet all their patient engagement needs. Those organizations cited gaps in communication, education, and survey functionality.  

To address gaps, organizations are adding AI-driven engagement layers to EHRs. These additions have two goals: to reduce administrative workloads and ease patient bottlenecks.  

Customer experiences have become seamless and personalized, and that expectation has crept into healthcare. Think about the experience of ordering from Amazon or booking a flight with Delta. Each experience is nearly frictionless and individually crafted for you.  

In healthcare, the patient experience remains fragmented, full of friction, and too often time-consuming and stressful. This isn’t because organizations don’t care. Systems like EHRs just aren’t built for this level of patient experience.  

Today’s EHRs were not created with this type of patient experience in mind. But this is what patients expect and deserve.  

That’s why organizations are turning to AI-driven solutions to enhance patient engagement, reduce administrative burdens, and alleviate patient bottlenecks. These improvements create a smoother, more personalized experience for the schoolteacher scheduling a procedure or the father of three trying to understand a new prescription.  

Boost Efficiency and Retention with AI 

Generative, conversational, and agentic AI tools can drive higher patient satisfaction and outcomes while reducing staff burnout and turnover. Agentic AI specifically can analyze patient interactions across channels to produce actionable intelligence and ensure a streamlined and personalized experience. 

Researchers have found that agentic AI systems can lower employees’ cognitive workload by 52%. Research has also shown that AI-powered predictive models can reduce hospitalizations, healthcare costs, and improve outcomes. For example, a healthcare revenue cycle outsourcer automated more than 12 million transactions with AI, streamlining financial clearance and registration, automating authorization processes, and reducing calls and no-shows. AI-powered automation saved the organization more than $30 million.   

AI systems automate personalized communications based on individual patients’ preferred method of communication and language. Automation frees staff to handle more complex tasks that require their human empathy and expertise.  

Agentic AI can also find friction points in patient interactions and predict the next best action based on the individual patient’s journey. This seamless experience can increase patient satisfaction and outcomes while also reducing no-shows. By automating routine patient interactions and questions, AI tools allow staff to focus on purpose-driven, meaningful parts of their jobs.  

AI systems can alleviate the burden of routine tasks on staff and enhance communication for patients. Employees can concentrate on work that requires their expertise, and patients can communicate with healthcare providers when and how it makes sense for them.  

Modernizing Engagement, Minimizing Disruption 

As organizations layer AI systems on their EHRs, it’s important to ensure the AI tools maintain healthcare’s high-level privacy regulations. Not all AI systems will be up to spec. Organizations should look for AI partners who are already familiar with healthcare privacy regulations and have built AI tools with those regulations in mind.  

Next, AI tools – specifically agentic AI – should be purpose-built to integrate with EHRs. It’s important to begin your search with clear outcomes in mind. Beginning with outcomes and working backwards can ensure that the AI systems you’re integrating with your EHR are built to achieve your specific outcomes while avoiding disruption and ensuring regulatory compliance.  

Most importantly, trust is key. Patients must trust that AI tools benefit their well-being. Staff need to trust that AI will help them do their jobs more effectively rather than replace them. We should never lose sight of the fact that at the end of every tool is a person who has entrusted their health and well-being to their doctor and staff. 

Engagement Through Human Connection 

Healthcare doesn’t have to lag other sectors in patient experience. Adopting AI systems with EHRs is the next step to improving patient engagement.   

As healthcare organizations boost engagement through AI, it’s important we remember technology’s human impacts. AI systems are only as useful to the degree that they can improve the lives of staff and patients.  

Improved engagement metrics are more than numbers. They mean that a busy mother in Michigan can seamlessly schedule a follow-up appointment, and that the librarian in Georgia can get answers about their test results when they need them. Better engagement means healthier, happier patients and families.