With five decades of experience, Shepherd Center provides world-class clinical care, research, and family support for people experiencing the most complex conditions, including spinal cord and brain injuries, multi-trauma, traumatic amputations, stroke, multiple sclerosis, and pain. An elite center ranked by U.S. News as one of the nation’s top hospitals for rehabilitation, Shepherd Center is also recognized as both Spinal Cord Injury and Traumatic Brain Injury Model Systems. Shepherd is the only rehabilitation facility in the nation with an intensive care unit on-site, allowing us to care for the most complex patients and begin the rehabilitation process sooner. Shepherd Center treats thousands of patients annually with unmatched expertise and unwavering compassion to help them begin again.
Shepherd Center's culture is one of hope, humor, and hard work. You will enjoy career growth, strong relationships with co-workers, strong support from leadership, and fun activities that have kept over 12% of staff members working at Shepherd for more than 20 years.
Position Summary
Shepherd Center is seeking an experienced Epic Application Manager to lead a clinical and ancillary applications team supporting Epic and related healthcare systems. This role is ideal for a collaborative Epic leader who enjoys developing people, partnering with operations, solving complex workflow challenges, and helping a mission-driven specialty hospital continue to optimize its EHR environment.
This position requires both strong people leadership and advanced Epic application expertise. The manager provides team leadership while also functioning as a hands-on senior analyst, guiding and directly supporting design, build, testing, upgrades, issue resolution, production support, and ongoing optimization.
The manager serves as a key bridge between Information Systems, clinical and ancillary operations, analysts, end users, our Community Connect partner, Epic representatives, and third-party vendors. The ideal candidate is an experienced Epic analyst or application leader who enjoys both leading people and staying close to the work. This is a player-coach role suited for someone who is comfortable balancing team management, hands-on build, project execution, production support, and operational partnership
Key Responsibilities
Team Leadership & Staff Development
- Lead and support the Epic Clinical/Ancillary Applications team, fostering a positive, respectful, and accountable work environment.
- Set clear expectations, priorities, goals, and regular touchpoints with team members.
- Provide coaching, feedback, recognition, mentoring, and performance management.
- Manage staffing plans, workload assignments, timekeeping, and on-call scheduling.
- Serve as an escalation point for complex application, workflow, integration, and end-user issues.
Epic Build, Configuration & Application Support
- Prioritize system requests working with operational leaders - based on organizational needs, risk, urgency, and team capacity.
- Perform / oversee complex Epic build, configuration, validation, testing, troubleshooting, optimization, and maintenance.
- Lead and analyze workflow design, build decisions, integrated testing, issue resolution, and operational readiness.
- Review and validate analyst build for quality, consistency, maintainability, and alignment with operational needs.
- Implement approved system changes following change control processes.
Epic Projects, Upgrades & Optimization
- Lead and support cross-functional Epic projects, enhancements, and optimization efforts.
- Participate in and oversee Epic upgrade activities, including Nova Notes, IRDs, SUs, RAs, build, testing, validation, deployment, and post-live support.
- Perform application and integrated testing, document results, and coordinate issue resolution.
- Provide senior-level analyst support for high-priority initiatives, production issues, and operational escalations.
- Facilitate meetings with team members and stakeholders to review priorities, progress, risks, and upcoming work.
Operational Partnership & Communication
- Build strong relationships with clinical leaders, ancillary departments, operational partners, analysts, end users, super users, vendors, Epic, and Community Connect partners.
- Translate technical concepts into clear, meaningful communication for operational, technical, and leadership audiences.
- Collaborate across clinical, ancillary, financial, technical, and operational teams to improve system effectiveness.
- Communicate project status, risks, issues, decisions, and resource needs clearly and timely.
Compliance, Documentation & Support
- Maintain knowledge of clinical/ancillary operations, regulatory requirements, Epic functionality, and industry best practices.
- Develop and maintain system documentation, support materials, and knowledge base content.
- Participate in Tier 2 on-call support rotation as needed.
- Deliver customer service aligned with Shepherd Center’s mission and pillars of excellence.
- Perform other related duties as assigned.
Required Minimum Certification
- Active Epic certification in at least one relevant Epic application required; multiple Epic certifications preferred. Examples may include EpicCare Ambulatory, ClinDoc, Orders, Radiant, Willow, Beaker, MyChart, or another Epic application.
Required Minimum Experience
- Minimum of three years of progressive healthcare IT, Epic application, clinical operations, ancillary operations, integration, analytics, or related healthcare technology experience required; five or more years preferred.
- Evidence of progressive leadership experience required, which may include formal management, team lead responsibilities, project leadership, mentoring, supervision, or equivalent experience.
- Experience functioning as an Epic senior analyst, application lead, or similar IT applications role required.
Preferred Qualifications
- Prior experience managing or leading an Epic applications team.
- Experience supporting one or more areas such as Ambulatory, Orders, ClinDoc, Lab, Pharmacy, Radiology/Imaging, MyChart, or integrated clinical workflows.
- Experience in a hospital, rehabilitation, academic medical center, specialty care, or complex healthcare environment.
- Experience with Epic upgrades, Nova Notes, integrated testing, change control, and optimization.
- Multiple active Epic certifications preferred.
- Experience with ServiceNow or similar IT service management tools.
Required Minimum Education
Bachelor’s degree in Nursing, Allied Health, Information Technology, Computer Science, Healthcare Administration, or a related field required.
