Trinity Health talks about saving nearly $80M at ViVE 2026

It started as a specific project, and it became something much bigger.

Trinity Health moved to Epic’s electronic health record system, and began to phase out some outdated systems. Mike Prokic, chief information technology strategy officer for Trinity Health, said the effort to retire legacy applications evolved and has paid big dividends.

Prokic tells Chief Healthcare Executive® that the phasing out of obsolete systems has become “a big differentiator for us.”

“What started out as something that had a beginning, middle and end … turned out to be something that lives on in perpetuity,” he says.

In fact, Trinity Health says the project has saved $80 million, and the estimated savings continue to grow.

“I think when all is said and done here, the number will exceed 100 million for us,” Prokic says.

Prokic and Nick O’Connor, chief technology officer and vice president of product engineering, will be talking about moving away from outdated systems and the benefits for health systems during a panel discussion at the ViVE digital health conference. The conference takes place in Los Angeles Feb. 22-25.

O’Connor says there are clear economic benefits, but there are also new opportunities for Trinity Health as well. In addition to phasing out older systems, Trinity has preserved its historic data and now has new innovation opportunities to take advantage of that data.

Trinity is “now utilizing some of our assets in a new and unique way that can benefit the business as well,” O’Connor says.

Based in Livonia, Michigan, Trinity Health is one of America’s largest nonprofit systems, with 92 hospitals and hundreds of other healthcare locations in its footprint. The Catholic system has thin operating margins, making it necessary to find savings in moving away from obsolete systems, Prokic says.

“This was one of the only ways to take out cost in one of the largest cost centers at Trinity Health,” Prokic says.

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Bolstering security

Obsolete systems pose “all kinds of risk from a compliance perspective,” O’Connor says. Those risks include over-sharing of data and data leakage.

“So this has another benefit that isn't quite captured in those cost savings, which is kind of that security space as well, reducing our exposure points and eliminating threats from the environment or potential vulnerabilities from the environment,” he says.

Trinity has bolstered its cybersecurity by moving away from some older systems that could be more vulnerable to attacks.

With a host of older systems, O’Connor says, “Your threat vector, your blast radius, is potentially huge.”

But with phasing out those vulnerable systems, he explains, “You're also reducing the number of potential exploitable vulnerabilities by taking those systems offline and putting them in a more secure post situation.”

“So this has another benefit that isn't quite captured in those cost savings, which is kind of that security space as well, reducing our exposure points and eliminating threats from the environment or potential vulnerabilities from the environment,” O’Connor says.

• Read more: Cedars-Sinai CEO talks about meeting financial challenges at ViVE 2026

‘Tyranny of tradition’

The Trinity Health leaders acknowledge one difficult aspect of retiring older systems. Some clinicians and staff like using those systems and aren’t thrilled about giving them up.

In the process of phasing out those old systems, O’Connor says they faced “the tyranny of tradition, the way that we've always done it.”

But O’Connor says the process helped engage deeper discussions with staff about those tools. In some cases, staff members may have needed those tools, but in many cases, there were opportunities to shift to better options that would help workers.

“There are other opportunities to enhance the business process that that tool that they became accustomed and used to, was actually holding them back or dragging them down. It wasn't seeing the full potential. So sometimes those conversations happen as well,” O’Connor says.

“When you're removing or archiving something … you could find ways to actually enhance their business process with some things that they didn't know existed,” he adds.

Prokic talked about the importance of building a coalition among top leaders to support decommissioning those legacy systems.

“It’s very important to build a coalition early on,” Prokic says. “That coalition started with our executive leadership team. We report on this program every month to our CEO.”

He also pointed out that the program was dubbed “Singularity,” and that leaders recognized the name.

“That was part of the strategy as well,” Prokic says. “Give it a brand, build some trust, build some credibility.”

The ViVE conference takes place Feb. 22-25 in Los Angeles. Chief Healthcare Executive® will be reporting from ViVE.