JMC transforms patient experience using Amazon Connect and Epic on AWS

Since 1979, JMC has been providing world-class healthcare to communities in southeastern Florida. It has plans for a state-of-the-art surgical unit, a new community hospital, and a patient tower that will increase its capacity to 334 beds—an increase of more than 33 percent. To fulfill its expansion goals with patient service at the heart of its mission, JMC saw the need to modernize mand unify its electronic health records (EHR) system. Patients had to use different portals to access records, pay bills, and reach customer service agents. “Our patients are absolutely front and center for us,” says Kevin Olson, vice president and chief information officer at JMC. “To enhance their experience while optimizing our resources, we needed to create a more unified and efficient system that could scale with our organization’s vision.”

 

Impressed by the high engagement of AWS teams and the potential to use AWS technologies to stay ahead while minimizing risk and up-front investment, JMC elected to run Epic on AWS. Teams from Epic, AWS, and Cordea Consulting (Cordea), an AWS Public Sector Partner, worked together to fulfill an ambitious 13-month implementation timeline. AWS teams provided free hands-on workshops and AWS Immersion Days to upskill JMC engineers, involving AWS Enterprise Support as the go-live date approached in August 2024. “It is night and day to have one unified patient experience,” says Olson. “And the ability to take advantage of all the other AWS technologies was an equal, if not bigger, consideration.”

 

Since 2019, AWS has been introducing new compute and storage technologies to support Epic customers, delivering industry-leading database performance while supporting the continued growth of customers such as JMC. “The direct implementation of Epic on AWS immediately proved to be the right choice for JMC,” says Julie Smith, solutions architect at Cordea. “JMC’s work toward an integrated clinical enterprise ultimately will empower it to remain a pillar of the community and provide world-class care to its population.”

 

As a building block for its infrastructure, JMC used Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS, which deploys a foundational set of capabilities that is designed to align with AWS best practices and multiple global compliance frameworks. In contrast to its on-premises system, JMC now has strengthened EHR resilience with an isolated recovery environment hosted in a separate AWS Region. This secure, network-isolated solution maintains critical patient data and can restore essential clinical operations within 15–20 minutes if primary systems are forced offline. As part of its emphasis on following best practices, JMC also integrates AWS Security Hub, which prioritizes critical security issues, helps JMC automate AWS security checks, and centralizes security alerts. Additionally, every 2 weeks, JMC meets with AWS to identify potential vulnerabilities.

Partway through the Epic on AWS implementation, JMC and Cordea identified the opportunity to reinvent JMC’s customer service. JMC replaced its 750,000-dollar legacy contact center with Amazon Connect, an AI-native contact center from AWS. This transition provided for personalized patient interactions across preferred channels while making every touchpoint more human, intelligent, and seamless. JMC reduced the rate of abandoned calls, where patients hang up before reaching an agent, from more than 9 percent to 5 percent through automated multichannel and personalized outreach. In many cases, AI-powered virtual assistants handle routine requests efficiently while seamlessly connecting patients to live agents for more complex needs.

 

Using Amazon Connect, JMC has improved its scheduling efficiency, boosting the use of its expensive radiology equipment to 95 percent, a 20 percent improvement. And more patients are seeking care within JMC’s network instead of turning elsewhere, which previously resulted in lost revenue. “Our mission is to make our advanced imaging equipment available to patients when they need it, ensuring timely access to critical diagnostic care,” says Shane Faullin, JMC’s director of analytics and automation.

 

Using Amazon Connect outbound campaigns, which facilitate proactive and personalized campaigns with just a few clicks, JMC routinely prompts patients to schedule follow-up appointments. It cut a persistent backlog of 1,800 radiology appointments by 60 percent, and patients can schedule within 24 hours instead of 2 weeks. “The volume of patients that come through the door places demands on our providers and staff, and we want to deliver the best patient experience,” says Faullin. “We use technology to make life easier for our people, so that they deliver better healthcare.”

Supervisors use near real-time metrics reports in Amazon Connect to monitor patient interactions through a reporting dashboard that updates every 15 seconds. Post-call analytics with near real-time transcriptions help JMC measure talk time, understand outcomes, and gauge sentiment. “We use this data to take action down the road and drive improvements to the patient experience,” Faullin says.

By implementing Amazon Connect and adopting a pay-as-you-go cloud model, JMC has cut its base costs for the call center in half, reduced call center operating expenses by 30 percent, and can scale its workloads with the best price performance. Now, JMC can implement plans to integrate even more cutting-edge technologies. For example, patients will be able to use Amazon Alexa to get directions to their appointments.

“We use technology not to displace humans but to augment where we can,” says Olson. “It’s tough enough just traversing a health system. Using Epic on AWS and Amazon Connect, our patients have one place to go for all things: scheduling, messaging the doctor, paying a bill, and everything else in between.”