A sign reading “Epic Intergalactic Headquarters” on campus.
Epic Systems
Dorothy Gale was right—the Land of Oz is not in Kansas. Rather, it is nestled in the rolling green fields of Verona, Wisconsin, a city of nearly 16,400 residents about 10 miles southwest of the capital city of Madison.
Verona is home to the 650-hectare headquarters of Epic Systems, one of the largest private US technology companies. Epic's software is ubiquitous in hospitals and clinics and stores the medical records of more than 280 million people in the US.
While the company's workforce is entrusted with the great responsibility of developing tools that assist doctors and nurses in patient care, Epic employees spend their day working in offices that look like they came straight from the pages of a science fiction novel or children's book.
A yellow brick road inspired by the Wizard of Oz winds through the hallways of a gleaming emerald green building. Giant chocolate chips mark the entrance to the chocolate factory, and a mischievous cat grins through the window of a building guarded by life-sized playing cards.
The Oz office building on Epic's campus.
Courtesy of Epic Systems
Last week, thousands of healthcare executives flocked to Epic's massive corporate campus to attend the company's annual user group meeting to hear about new products and upcoming initiatives, among other things. This year's theme was “Storytime,” and Judy Faulkner, the company's 81-year-old CEO, took the stage dressed as a swan, with a tuft of feathers in her hair.
Faulkner, a reticent mathematician who founded Epic in a basement in 1979, told the crowd that the surrounding buildings and their maintenance accounted for 8% of the company's total costs. But she made clear that it was much cheaper for Epic to buy land and build in Verona than in a tech hub like San Francisco, Seattle or New York. And in this small Midwestern town, the company is far from the distractions of big cities.
“Most of us in software development are active science fiction readers,” Faulkner said during her keynote.
The campus of the Wizards Academy.
Courtesy of Epic Systems
For public market investors, Epic has always been something of a fantasy.
The 14,000-employee company does not adhere to a budget, has not made any acquisitions and has never accepted investment from venture capitalists. The company's website says it abides by its own Ten Commandments, the first of which is: “Don't go public.”
Epic generated revenue of $4.9 billion last year. Cerner, Epic's biggest competitor in the electronic health records market, went public in 1986 and was acquired by oracle in 2022 for over $28 billion. According to Oracle financials, Cerner contributed $5.9 billion to revenue in fiscal year 2023.
The S&P 500 sub-index for software and services companies trades at 9 times sales. On average, this would give Epic a valuation of around $45 billion.
Faulkner is not a fan of a Cerner-like outcome. After all, Epic's second commandment is: “Don't get taken over.”
“Why should the company be owned by people whose primary interest is return on investment?” Faulkner asked on stage last week.
A tour of the Epic campus makes it clear that the company exists miles away from Wall Street.
Each of Epic's 28 office buildings has a specific theme. They're grouped into mini-campuses with names like Prairie Campus, Farm Campus, Central Park Campus, Wizards Academy Campus and Storybook Campus. The buildings have become more ornate over the years, which required some negotiation with the architects, according to Epic's website.
The chairs in the conference rooms match the complex themes of their buildings. And while the campus' dinosaurs, suits of armor and working carousel are fun, they also serve a purpose. Faulkner says her plan was to create a welcoming environment that attracts and inspires talent, and to ensure her employees have the quiet space they need to be productive, according to a number of testimonials on Epic's website.
“We compete with the big technology companies,” Faulkner said in a testimonial. “These traits help us hire the best people possible. That helps us be more productive.”
An aerial view of the Epic campus.
Epic Systems
Faulkner believes that a private office should be available to every employee who wants one. Since the vast majority of the company's workforce works at headquarters every day, some people end up doing double work, as the number of new hires often exceeds the number of construction workers.
Those who want to escape the office altogether can hop on one of the company's 600 cowhide bikes and attend meetings from a treehouse, slide down a rabbit hole or eat lunch in a train carriage.
A universe beneath the earth
Epic's address provides the first clue to its existence in an underworld. The company is based in the Milky Way in 1979, a nod to its founding date and Faulkner's penchant for celestial themes.
Visitors are greeted by a sign reading “Epic Intergalactic Headquarters” as they drive down a road that winds between buildings and vast green fields. Around 750 acres of the Epic campus is working farmland, home to 42 sheep, 14 cows and a donkey.
Most of the company's parking garages are underground, making the campus look impressive even from above, and employees don't have to worry about scraping snow or ice off their cars during the bitter Midwestern winter.
Even when they're not parking, the subway is nothing new to workers. The campus buildings are connected by a network of tunnels and covered overpasses, so people don't have to leave their homes to commute between them.
The exterior of Epic's Deep Space auditorium.
Courtesy of Epic Systems
Employees are also required to attend a monthly staff meeting in an underground auditorium called Deep Space. Meetings last about two hours and employees present projects and discuss industry trends.
They always include a grammar lesson, Faulkner said at the Users Group Meeting in the auditorium, which opened in 2013 and has space for around 11,400 people. The room is an engineering feat because it is not supported by any pillars.
To get to Deep Space, visitors must descend through different levels of the earth. The different levels of the building are called Sky, Grass, Earth, Rock, Magma and Core. The lobby in front of the auditorium is inspired by the Lord of the Rings series, and the word “precious” is ominously scrawled on the wall in huge, bright red letters.
Sci-fi references are everywhere. There's a cafeteria called 42, which answers the question of life, the universe and everything in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The Wizards Academy campus is clearly inspired by Harry Potter and has its own King's Cross train station, a giant chess set and a collection of unruly portraits.
Epic is building a brand new campus on the same site, inspired by epic fantasy films like Game of Thrones and Star Wars. The cranes were adorned with giant kites that soared high above the campus during last week's event.
Epic's Endor Treehouse.
Courtesy of Epic Systems
Although each office building has its own unique theme, the basic framework of the physical structures is very similar. Long office hallways are punctuated by occasional conference rooms, and most buildings are no higher than three stories, a design decision Faulkner says is intended to encourage face-to-face meetings.
The Prairie Campus, where Epic's oldest offices are located, features buildings named after celestial bodies such as stars, planets and galaxies.
On the Storybook Campus, the building called Mystery looks like an old mansion, the halls of which you could easily see Sherlock Holmes wandering. The Castaway building resembles a ship, and its interior is full of nautical decoration.
In many buildings, the walls are decorated from floor to ceiling. Jewelry, ceramics, mosaics and paintings by local artists can be seen everywhere.
A snowy day on the Epic campus.
Epic Systems
As I strolled around the grounds during the Users Group meeting, it was easy to forget that Epic is a software company.
But outside the fantasy campus, medical professionals and their patients have very real demands on this giant technology provider. And there are plenty of very real critics.
Epic has been accused for years of delaying interoperability efforts that would simplify the sharing of patient information between providers.
Health data in the United States has traditionally been siloed and difficult to transfer because clinics, hospitals and health systems can store their information in different formats with dozens of different vendors. The data is also protected by federal laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Oracle, which is now Epic's main competitor, says Epic is defending its turf with all its might. In a May blog post, Oracle Executive Vice President Ken Glueck wrote, “Everyone in the industry understands that Epic CEO Judy Faulkner is the biggest obstacle to EHR interoperability.”
Epic has recently been helping the federal government build a data-sharing network called the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), which is designed to clarify both the legal and technical requirements for sharing patient data at scale. Epic announced last month that it plans to transition all of its customers to TEFCA by the end of next year.
However, the company still plans to leverage its extensive proprietary network. At its Users Group Meeting, Epic announced a number of new generative artificial intelligence features for its Cosmos platform, which is an anonymized patient dataset that doctors can use to support treatment and conduct research.
Seth Hain, Epic's senior vice president of research and development, spoke to reporters after the keynote in a conference room decorated like a lodge. Hain had just given the audience a high-sounding demo in which an AI agent assessed its recovery from what was supposed to be wrist surgery using data from Cosmos.
He said such tools could be ready for use in just a few years.
“The technology is developing very quickly,” said Hain.
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