Virginia Beach, Virginia 12.8.2025

EHR on Cloud, Why? How?

by Eric H. Umstead, MSIS – SVP OptaFi

Healthcare payers, providers, and life sciences organizations face a critical need to prioritize growth to meet the demands of their customer base, investors, and technological advancements. However, managing the cost associated with this growth – including the availability and training of support and innovation resources, the rise in healthcare cyber incidents, evolving compliance requirements, M&A activities, telehealth, and the need for business intelligence (e.g., generative AI) – becomes a significant issue.

Why the cloud

The need for scalable and flexible infrastructure to meet these demands mandates a movement away from traditional physical technology constructs to a fully digital approach.  Leveraging infrastructure as code (IaC) empowers organizations to manage scale without the overhead of physical data centers, equipment, and maintenance resources.  It further provides a controlled environment, free from human error and unapproved modification.

While the benefits of the public cloud are numerous, the difficulties of managing a transition from traditional to flexible cloud models are a showstopper for many organizations. Partnering with an experienced provider who can assist with the digital transformation journey is crucial to its success.

OptaFi has successfully assisted several healthcare organizations in their journeys, including:

  • Full EHR re-platforming to customer cloud tenants
    • Cost Optimization services
    • EHR Innovations and automation of manual processes
    • Cloud operating model creation and training of client teams
  • Full EHR migrations/builds to OptaFi cloud tenant – Hosted model
    • Fully managed EHR
    • Single, transparent monthly bill for cloud consumption and services
    • Full integration with dependent applications and workflows
  • Partial migrations of EHR for Disaster Recovery and/or Cyber Resiliency
    • Meeting or exceeding vendor requirements for DR recovery
    • Isolated Recovery Environments (IRE) for cyber event recovery
      • Option: OPTAFI fully hosts the IRE platform to reduce the burden on the existing team
    • Cost optimization of the DR environment, utilizing pilot light configurations where applicable
  • Cloud rationalization and consulting
    • Complete application rationalization for cloud planning and datacenter exit
    • Healthcare Security and Compliance consulting
      • HITRUST, HIPAA, SOC2, CIS
      • Complete micro segmentation and zero-trust architecture
    • EHR re-platforming consultation and planning
    • Stand-alone cost optimization consulting
  • EHR (Epic) Infrastructure Design and Consultation
    • ECSA, ODBA, Cogito, Data Courier consulting, and staff augmentation
    • Automated update, upgrade, and refresh cycles to give more time back to clinicians and analysts
    • End-User access design to reduce licensing cost
  • Full Epic managed services – on-prem or cloud
    • Comprehensive support model to reduce resource costs
      • Expert-level support at a fraction of FTE cost
    • Security and Compliance services focused on your business needs
    • Transformational design to empower growth and change

Many organizations claim to be experts in the EHR cloud journey, but they are often limited to academic knowledge and lack practical experience. They hire “experts” on demand who have no experience working as a team.  Others may have experience with cloud migrations but fail to grasp the nuances of your EHR platform and workflows. They claim they can transform your EHR platform in short order, but you end up with a lack of clarity, a myriad of change requests, and slipping timelines.

Time is the most significant cost factor during a major migration.  The time spent managing and paying for two environments may be the most critical barrier to entry for cloud transformation.  OptaFi has built a flexible, patented, secure framework for EHR migration to the cloud that is battle-proven and significantly reduces your time to value, increasing your ROI.  Our unique technology partnerships and workflows prevent vendor lock-in while lowering your operating costs and giving your clinicians and analysts more time back. One of OptaFi’s biggest differentiators is that we don’t just migrate EPIC, we also migrate any other ancillary systems beyond EPIC and work with multiple vendors to coordinate, validate, and streamline the entire ecosystem so our clients don’t have to manage the complexity themselves.

OptaFi is “built by Healthcare for Healthcare”.  Our only goal is your success. The move to the cloud is only half of the battle; ongoing optimization and management are just as important.  Whether leveraging OptaFi managed services or leveraging your existing teams, we can ensure proper training, workforce development, change management, and FinOps are integrated during and after migration.

For the most cost-effective path to EHR transformation, contact us to discuss how to begin your journey.

-Headquartered in Virginia Beach, Virginia, OptaFi’s mission is to modernize Healthcare environments with a secure, cloud-first, high speed and cost-controlled digital landscape.

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