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Epic's MyChart Central expands unified experience in new states

MyChart Central is now live at every health system in Louisiana, which Epic says is a big step toward streamlining the patient portal experience.

Sara Heath
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Published: 16 Oct 2025

Epic Systems is celebrating a step forward for MyChart Central, the landing page the EHR vendor unveiled at its user group meeting earlier this year to unify disparate patient portal log-ins.

In an announcement last week, Epic said healthcare organizations in Louisiana became the first to offer statewide access on MyChart Central. This lets any patient visiting a provider in the state that uses Epic to log into their patient portal using a single log-in, known as their Epic ID.

These capabilities are a part of Epic's overall effort to improve user experience of its products, according to Trevor Berceau, an R&D director at Epic.

For a long time, the vendor had been hearing from frustrated patients who had multiple MyChart patient portal accounts for the different providers they saw. Epic addressed that problem a few years ago with Happy Together, which lets users log into one MyChart and see a unified view of their accounts at other providers, too.

"But over time, that feedback shifted to, 'this is really helpful that I can see everything from one login, but why do I need to remember and maintain 3, 4, 5 different accounts?'" Berceau said in an August interview.

That's where MyChart Central comes in, he said. It's a simple solution to an important task -- making the patient experience better, he explained.

More organizations launch MyChart Central

The news out of Louisiana is the first step forward in expanding MyChart Central use.

The company launched the product with health systems in Wisconsin, where Epic is headquartered and many systems are customers. Berceau said this was a logical step to ensure there'd actually be utility in the launch.

"We were looking for a geography where a high density of the healthcare providers were all willing to bring it live and offer it to their patients," he said. "If we were only able to get one organization in the area live, then the Epic ID doesn't really help because it's just replacing that one username and password."

Berceau said at the time of the launch that Epic anticipated spreading to other health systems starting around November, making the news out of Louisiana ahead of schedule.

Easing the patient portal user experience

Unlike many product launches, Berceau said performance wouldn't be entirely dictated by adoption rates.

Of course, Epic is going to keep an eye on how many patients sign up to access their portals using MyChart Central, but the real measure of success is going to be on ease of navigation.

Did patients successfully make their Epic ID? Did they need to call the Epic or health system help desk? How easily could health systems resolve password resets, if there were any resets necessary at all?

"We want this to make things easier for patients," Berceau stated. "The message is pretty simple: if you have multiple MyChart accounts, this is a way that you can get a single set of credentials that gets you into all of them, and the health system can still help you with everything that they already help you with."

But the single set of credentials isn't the only value proposition, he continued. MyChart Central makes it so users only have to update their information, such as a change of address, in MyChart Central, and it'll update across all of their providers.

And, notably, the single set of credentials makes it easier for patients to carry their health data from one provider to the next. This has been a long-time goal for Epic, Berceau noted, with fortuitous timing after the White House's Make Health Tech Great Again event in July.

"One of the things that I know patients have brought up is it's hard for them to share their information with other apps if they need to remember all of their different MyChart usernames and passwords," Berceau noted. "And this means that you can share your information with whatever app you want without needing to remember a whole bunch of usernames and passwords. All you need is your Epic ID."

"This is a problem that we recognized and kicked off work on a couple of years ago," he concluded. "It's exciting that we are seeing some of the same problems that the government and others are seeing in terms of making this easier for patients."

Sara Heath has covered news related to patient engagement and health equity since 2015.

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