Inside Epic Systems’ mythical campus, a world away from Wall Street

Dorothy Gale was right—The Wizard of Oz was not set in Kansas. Instead, it sits amid the rolling green fields of Verona, Wisconsin, a town of nearly 16,400 people about 10 miles southwest of the state capital, Madison.

Verona is home to the quirky 1,670-acre headquarters of Epic Systems, one of the largest privately held technology companies in the United States. Epic's software is seemingly ubiquitous in hospitals and clinics, storing the medical records of more than 280 million people in the United States

While the company's employees have the heavy responsibility of building tools to support doctors and nurses in delivering patient care, Epic's employees mill in and out of the office all day looking like they were plucked straight from a science book .

A yellow brick road inspired by “The Wizard of Oz” winds through the corridors of a gleaming verdant building. A giant chocolate chip marks the entrance to the chocolate factory, a playful cat grins through the window, and life-size playing cards surround the building's windows.

Thousands of healthcare executives descended on Epic's sprawling campus last week for the company's annual conference user group meetingin part to learn about new products and upcoming initiatives. This year’s theme is “Story Time” Judy FaulknerThe company's 81-year-old chief executive took to the stage dressed as a swan, with a plume in his hair.

Faulkner, a conservative mathematician who founded Epic in a basement in 1979, told the crowd that the surrounding buildings and their maintenance accounted for 8% of the company's total expenses. But she made it clear that it would be much cheaper for Epic to buy land and build a home in Verona than in tech hubs like San Francisco, Seattle or New York. In this small Midwestern town, the company is far removed from the distractions of the big city.

“Most of us software developers are active readers of science fiction,” Faulkner said during her keynote.

Epic has always been a bit of a fantasy for public market investors.

The company has 14,000 employees, doesn't stick to a predetermined budget, has made zero acquisitions, and has never received any investment from venture capitalists. According to its website, it abides by its own set of Ten Commandments, the first of which is “Don't go public.”

Epic's revenue last year was $4.9 billion. Cerner is Epic's number one competitor in the electronic medical records market. It went public in 1986 and was Oracle It will exceed $28 billion by 2022. according to Oracle's Financial ConditionCerner contributed $5.9 billion in revenue in fiscal 2023.

S&P 500 Index Sub-index of software and services companies trade at 9 times revenue. On average, Epic is valued at about $45 billion.

Faulkner was not concerned with Senna-like outcomes. After all, Epic’s second commandment is “Don’t get acquired.”

“Why should it be owned by people whose primary concern is return on equity?” Faulkner said onstage last week.

Visiting Epic's campus, it's clear the company is far removed from Wall Street.

Epic's 28 office buildings are themed. They are clustered into mini-campuses with names such as Prairie Campus, Farm Campus, Central Park Campus, Wizard Academy Campus, and Storybook Campus. According to the Epic website, the buildings have become more ornate over the years, which requires some haggling with the architect.

The conference room chairs match the intricate theme of its architecture. While the campus's dinosaurs, suits of armor, and its working carousel are fun to observe, they also have a purpose. According to a series of testimonials on Epic's website, Faulkner said her plan is to create a welcoming environment that attracts and motivates talent and ensures her employees have the quiet space they need to work efficiently.

“We compete with big tech companies,” Faulkner said in a deposition. “These attributes help us hire the best employees possible. This helps us be more efficient.”

Faulkner said a separate office should be available to each employee who needs one. With the vast majority of the company's employees working at headquarters every day, some work double time as the pace of recruitment often outpaces the pace of construction.

Those who want to escape the office altogether can hop on one of the company's 600 cow-print bicycles and hold meetings in a treehouse, slide down a rabbit hole or eat lunch in a train car.

underground universe

Epic's address provided the first clue to its underworld existence. The company is set in the 1979 Milky Way, a nod to the company's founding date and Faulkner's love of celestial themes.

As visitors drive along the road that winds between buildings and vast green fields, they'll see a sign that reads “Epic Interstellar Headquarters.” The Epic campus covers approximately 750 acres of active farmland and is home to 42 sheep, 14 cattle and a donkey.

Much of the company's parking is underground, which helps the campus maintain an impressive feel above. It also means employees don’t have to worry about scraping snow or ice off their cars during the cold Midwestern winters.

Even without parking, workers are no strangers to the underground. The campus' buildings are connected by a network of tunnels and enclosed skywalks so people can travel between them without having to step outside.

Employees are also required to attend monthly staff meetings held in an underground auditorium called Deep Space. The meeting lasted about two hours, with employees presenting projects and discussing industry trends.

They also always include grammar lessons, Faulkner told a user group meeting at the auditorium, which opened in 2013 and seats about 11,400 people. This room is a feat of engineering as there are no columns to support it.

To reach deep space, visitors must descend to various levels of the Earth. The different levels of the building are named Sky, Grass, Dirt, Rock, Lava and Core. The hall outside the auditorium is inspired by the Lord of the Rings series, and the word “precious” is ominously scrawled in large, glowing red letters on the wall.

Science fiction references are everywhere. There is a cafeteria called “42”, which is the answer to the questions about life, the universe and everything in “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”. The Wizarding College campus takes clear inspiration from Harry Potter, with its own King's Cross station, giant chess set and collection of unruly portraits.

Epic is building a new campus on the same site inspired by epic fantasy franchises like Game of Thrones and Star Wars. At last week's event, cranes were decked out with giant kites that soared high above the campus.

While each office building has its own unique theme, the skeleton of the physical structure is very similar. Long corridors of offices are broken up by occasional meeting rooms, and most buildings are no more than three stories tall, a design choice Faulkner said was made to facilitate face-to-face meetings.

The Prairie campus is home to Epic's oldest offices, and its buildings are named after celestial bodies such as stars, planets and galaxies.

On Storybook Campus, a building called “The Mystery” looks like an old mansion, making it easy to imagine Sherlock Holmes strolling its halls. The Castaway building resembles a ship, and the interior is filled with nautical decorations.

The walls of many buildings are decorated from floor to ceiling. Trinkets, ceramics, mosaics and paintings from local artists are displayed throughout.

Wandering around during user group meetings, it's easy to forget that Epic is a software company.

Beyond its fantasy campus, however, medical professionals and their patients have very real needs for this large technology provider. There are also a lot of very real critics.

Epic has been accused for years of stalling on interoperability efforts that would help streamline the exchange of patient information among providers.

Healthcare data in the United States has historically been siled and difficult to move because clinics, hospitals and health systems can store their information in a variety of formats across dozens of different vendors. This data is also protected by federal laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Oracle, Epic's current main competitor, said that Epic vigorously protects its turf. in a month of may Blog articleOracle executive vice president Ken Glueck wrote, “Everyone in the industry understands that Epic CEO Judy Faulkner is the biggest obstacle to EHR interoperability.”

Epic has recently been helping the federal government build a data exchange network called the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Protocol (TEFCA), which is designed to eliminate the legal and technical requirements for sharing patient data at scale. Epic said last month it planned to migrate all customers to TEFCA by the end of next year.

But the company still plans to use its extensive proprietary network. At its user group meeting, Epic announced a number of new generative artificial intelligence capabilities for its Cosmos platform, a de-identified patient data set that clinicians can use to support treatment and conduct research.

Seth Hain, Epic's senior vice president of research and development, spoke to reporters after the keynote in a conference room decorated like a hotel. Hain just showed the audience a fascinating demonstration in which an artificial intelligence agent cross-referenced data from Cosmos to assess his recovery after so-called wrist surgery.

He said such tools could be ready within a few years at the earliest.

“The technology is advancing very rapidly,” Hein said.

watch: Artificial intelligence disrupts medical records