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+--- Thread: Surgery Partners' EHR: Transitioning to Expanse at $1M in Cost Avoidance (/showthread.php?tid=2298)
Surgery Partners' EHR: Transitioning to Expanse at $1M in Cost Avoidance - BUram - 05-05-2026
Surgery Partners and CereCore
Challenge
Surgery Partners operated 180+ locations across 35 states with fragmented EHR instances and limited centralized governance, which created inconsistent workflows, variable uptime risk, and high operational overhead, especially during acquisitions.
Results
CereCore helped Surgery Partners standardize MEDITECH across the enterprise, reduce variability in clinical workflows, and accelerate onboarding for newly acquired facilities. By centralizing hosting, we improved uptime and simplified patching and upgrades, enabling Surgery Partners’ IT team to focus on strategic initiatives rather than routine maintenance.
10
Hospitals migrated in 10 months
99.8%
Patching compliance average
13
Locations on centralized hosting
About the Provider
Surgery Partners operates over 180 ancillary service locations in 35 states, including ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) and surgical hospitals. Treating over 600,000 patients annually, the organization is a leader in the shift toward high-quality, cost-effective surgical care. Their mission is driven by strategic partnerships that enhance patient quality of life through technological and operational excellence.
Centralizing Infrastructure for Enterprise Scale
The partnership matured into a comprehensive hosting services agreement where CereCore became the primary provider for MEDITECH applications. By migrating surgical hospitals on MEDITECH 6.x and Expanse to a centralized data center in Nashville, Surgery Partners eliminated the burden of managing local server environments. This shift allowed the organization to standardize its technology stack, ensuring that every facility—regardless of its legacy system—operated on a reliable and secure platform.
Key Outcomes:
- Accelerated Migration Timeline: Successfully transitioned 10 surgical hospitals to a centralized data center within a strict 10-month window with zero downtime.
- Elite Security Standards: Achieved and maintained a 99.8% patching compliance average across all OS servers and third-party applications throughout 2023.
- Operational Consistency: Established standardized monthly patching and data backup cycles for every facility within four weeks of their migration.
- Infrastructure Optimization: Implemented proactive resource monitoring (storage and server) to ensure 24/7 system availability and efficient application performance.
- Informed Decision Support: Delivered monthly infrastructure reporting to Surgery Partners leadership, providing transparency into hosted environment changes and growth capacity.
Standardized Maintenance and Reliability
A critical component of the hosting transition was the implementation of rigorous patching and data backup cycles. CereCore established these standards within four weeks of the transition for each facility. Throughout 2023, the application management and infrastructure teams maintained a 99.8% patching compliance average. This proactive approach to server health ensures that Surgery Partners’ clinical systems remain secure against vulnerabilities while maintaining high availability for providers.
Strategic Resource Reallocation
By leveraging CereCore for core IT operations, Surgery Partners’ leadership was able to reorganize internal IT teams. Freed from the day-to-day "heavy lifting" of infrastructure maintenance, internal resources shifted their focus to IT strategy and innovation. This realignment has been instrumental in supporting the company’s long-term growth plan and ensuring that technology serves as a catalyst for clinical success rather than an operational bottleneck.
"I have seen the value first-hand in a partnership. Sometimes as an organization you have to take a step back and determine whether we should develop this as a core competency. Or, should we leverage a partner that’s already solved for this and can do it at scale so that we can focus on areas we do want to be our core competency."
Varun Gadhok | CIO, Surgery Partners
Result
By centralizing IT infrastructure, Surgery Partners achieved the scale necessary to support its growth trajectory. The migration to the Nashville data center provided a reliable, high-performing environment that reduced the maintenance burden on internal staff. With a 99.8% patching compliance rate, the organization now operates with improved security and reliability, providing a stable foundation for future acquisitions and technological innovation.
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