Patient-centric Records: More Than Epic’s MyChart Central

When Epic announced the rollout of MyChart Central, it made headlines across the healthcare IT space. The feature is straightforward: Patients with an Epic ID can log in once and access MyChart portals across multiple Epic-powered health systems. No more juggling usernames and passwords for each hospital or clinic you’ve ever visited.

For patients and caregivers, this feels like overdue progress. For years, many have been stuck managing multiple accounts (sometimes five or more) just to access lab results, imaging reports, or visit summaries from different health systems. Something as simple as finding an immunization record could turn into a digital scavenger hunt.

But while login consolidation is a real improvement, the bigger problem remains: True medical record consolidation across vendors and systems still hasn’t been solved.

The Long Road to Interoperability

The dream of a unified patient record is not new.

Regulators and innovators have been chasing it for years:

* The 21st Century Cures Act (2016) introduced requirements around patient data access and information blocking, pushing vendors and health systems toward open APIs.

* Apple Health Records (2018–present) now pulls EHR data into iPhones using FHIR APIs, but uptake is uneven and still depends on whether a patient’s health system participates.

* Google Health (first iteration, 2008–2011) attempted to create a patient-controlled medical record but shuttered after limited adoption.

* Countless health IT startups have tried to build patient-centered record aggregators. Few have broken through the entrenched EHR vendor and health system silos.

Despite regulatory and technological advances, progress has been incremental. Clinical data is still largely fragmented, incomplete, and difficult for both patients and providers to access holistically.

Why Fragmentation Hurts Patients and Clinicians

The consequences of poor interoperability aren’t just administrative annoyances; they can be dangerous.

* Medication errors happen when a clinician doesn’t see prescriptions written elsewhere.

* Duplicate tests and imaging waste resources and delay care.

* Critical context is missing when a specialist doesn’t receive records from a referring physician.

A UK coroner’s report recently warned that inadequate health record sharing has contributed to preventable patient deaths. In the U.S., despite billions invested in EHR adoption, care remains siloed across organizations.

Clinicians feel this pain daily—spending precious minutes tracking down records, reconciling medication lists, or piecing together incomplete histories. Patients feel it when they must print, fax, or hand-carry their records from one office to another.

Where MyChart Central Fits

Epic’s MyChart Central directly addresses a very visible frustration: portal sprawl. If you’ve been treated at three different Epic hospitals, you now have a single login experience instead of three. For usability, this matters.

But it’s also important to recognize what MyChart Central does not do:

* It does not merge patient records into a single longitudinal chart.

* It does not address non-Epic environments, where patients might also have portals through Cerner, Meditech, Allscripts, specialty-specific EHRs, or DTC provider systems (e.g., Hims, Hers, Ro, etc).

* It does not solve the issue of incomplete data flow across organizations. Records may still be siloed, just behind a more convenient login.

In other words, MyChart Central is a usability win within Epic’s ecosystem, not a systemic interoperability breakthrough.

What True Progress Would Look Like

For this to be more than a vendor feature, several things need to happen:

1. Cross-Vendor Standards with Teeth:  We already have FHIR APIs and regulatory requirements, but compliance varies widely. Stronger incentives and penalties are needed to ensure data exchange isn’t optional.

2. Patient-Centered Record Aggregation:  Patients should be able to see their entire medical history in one place, regardless of where they received care. Think of it like online banking: multiple accounts, one interface.

3. Bidirectional Data Liquidity:  Clinicians need as much access as patients do. Data must move both ways, so when a patient shows up at a new system, their record follows them seamlessly.

4. Trust, Security, and Equity:  Any solution must prioritize privacy, robust consent management, and equitable access. Otherwise, digital divides will deepen, leaving the most vulnerable patients with the least access.

A Step Forward, Not the Finish Line

Epic deserves credit for recognizing a pain point and delivering a user-friendly solution. MyChart Central will reduce portal fatigue for millions of patients, but as long as record-sharing is confined within vendor walls, the deeper problem persists.

If interoperability is going to move beyond incremental features, it will require cooperation across vendors, stronger regulatory enforcement, and a cultural shift toward data belonging first and foremost to the patient.

Until then, MyChart Central is a helpful step, but it is not the destination.

What capabilities in health data access would make a real difference in your life or work? If you’re working on interoperability, I’d love to hear your perspective and to work with you. https://www.hanhlemd.com/#services