Comparison
Epic is the world's leading EHR. Its built-in analytics have real limitations.
Cogito, Caboodle, SlicerDicer, and Radar are powerful tools in the right context. For cross-system analysis, self-service queries, and fast custom reporting, they have meaningful constraints. This is an honest look at both sides.
Understanding Epic Analytics
Epic's reporting ecosystem: four tools, four roles
Epic's analytics environment is a suite of interconnected tools, each serving a specific function. Understanding what each does — and does not do — is the starting point for any honest comparison. Each component requires Epic certification to configure, and Cogito implementation alone costs $500,000 to $2,000,000 for mid-sized health systems.
Analytics and data warehouse
Epic Cogito
Epic's analytics platform. Requires Epic Cogito certification to configure. Implementation costs $500,000-2,000,000 for mid-sized health systems. Provides the foundation for enterprise reporting within the Epic ecosystem.
The enterprise data model
Epic Caboodle
Epic's analytical data warehouse that normalizes Clarity operational data into an analytics-optimized structure. Queries on large Caboodle datasets can take minutes on large patient populations. Requires DBA expertise to maintain.
Self-service analytics
Epic SlicerDicer
Epic's end-user data exploration tool. Powerful within the Epic data model, but requires training and configuration. Clinical staff adoption is consistently low — most users find the interface requires more skill than advertised.
Operational dashboards
Epic Radar
Pre-built real-time operational dashboards for clinical workflows and nurse stations. Excellent for within-Epic operational visibility. Limited for cross-system or historical trend analysis beyond Epic data.
Where Epic Excels
What Epic reporting does genuinely well
Epic's reporting tools are optimized for the problems they were designed to solve. Within those bounds, they are excellent and difficult to replicate with any other platform.
Real-time operational dashboards
Radar dashboards give charge nurses, bed management teams, and clinical supervisors real-time visibility into census, throughput, and operational status. This is Epic's strongest analytics use case and is genuinely difficult to replicate externally.
Direct EMR integration
Because Epic analytics live inside the same system as clinical documentation, operational data is immediately available without export or ETL processes. For real-time clinical workflows, this native integration depth is a significant advantage.
Pre-built Epic operational reports
Epic ships hundreds of standard operational reports covering scheduling, billing, clinical documentation, and operational throughput. If your question is a standard Epic operational question, there is likely a pre-built answer already available.
Epic Registries for chronic disease programs
Epic's Registries module tracks patients in chronic disease programs and quality initiatives within the Epic patient population. For organizations fully on Epic, this provides solid chronic disease management and care gap tracking.
The Limitations
Where Epic's built-in reporting falls short
Cross-system analysis is not possible
If your health system operates Epic for primary care and AthenaHealth for a specialty service line, or uses a separate billing system, Epic analytics cannot see the second system's data. Each EHR remains a separate silo. Cross-population analysis requires a separate data warehouse project outside of Epic.
Caboodle queries are slow on large datasets
Caboodle's analytical model is more optimized than Clarity for reporting, but complex population-level queries on three to five years of encounter data routinely take minutes to return. Interactive exploration of historical data becomes a frustrating experience for clinical users.
Payer comparison requires Crystal Reports
Comparing performance across payers — which value-based contracts are delivering ROI, which payers are denying claims most frequently, which quality contracts have the best payment triggers — requires custom Crystal Reports programming that most Epic teams do not have in-house.
The report request queue problem
Most Epic environments have a 2-4 week wait for custom report requests. A quality director who needs readmission data broken out by admitting physician submits a ticket and waits. During those four weeks, the clinical situation continues unchanged.
SlicerDicer adoption remains poor
SlicerDicer was designed to give clinical staff self-service data access. In practice, the interface requires training, and clinical staff who do not use it daily forget the workflow. Most organizations find that a small minority of power users access SlicerDicer; the rest depend on the analytics team.
Historical trend depth limitations
Running five-year trend analysis on Epic data requires careful Caboodle query optimization. Organizations frequently find that historical queries beyond two years of data cause performance problems that require DBA intervention to resolve before results are usable.
The Cost of a Question
What it costs to get one custom answer from your Epic environment
Average Crystal Reports customization in an Epic environment: $5,000 to $15,000 and a 2-4 week turnaround. A Vizier question: type it in English, get an answer in 30 seconds.
One Custom Epic Report
The Same Question in Vizier
The compounding effect:
An organization that needs ten custom reports per quarter at $10,000 average each is spending $400,000 per year on custom Epic reporting — not counting analyst salaries. The same organization using Vizier for supplemental analytics could ask those same questions in under ten minutes at no additional per-question cost.
Feature Comparison
Epic built-in reporting vs Vizier for analytics flexibility
| Capability | Epic (Cogito / Caboodle) | Vizier |
|---|---|---|
| Self-service analytics | SlicerDicer (steep learning curve) | Plain English questions |
| Cross-system data analysis | Epic data only | Any exported dataset |
| Custom report turnaround | 2-4 week request queue | 30 seconds |
| Historical trend depth | Limited (Caboodle query lag on large sets) | Full export history |
| Non-technical user access | SlicerDicer training required | No training needed |
| Payer comparison analytics | Custom Crystal Reports required | Ask directly in plain English |
| MIPS composite scoring | Epic Registries module | Built-in, real-time |
| Cross-service line analysis | Requires Cogito configuration | Upload both datasets |
| Setup and implementation | $500K-2M Cogito project | Same day, self-serve |
| Cost of one custom question | $5,000-15,000 plus 2-4 weeks | Included in subscription |
Complementary, Not Competitive
Vizier does not replace Epic. It answers what Epic cannot answer quickly.
Vizier is not an EHR. We are not suggesting you leave Epic. Epic handles clinical documentation, ordering, scheduling, billing, and real-time operational workflows in ways that no analytics platform should try to replace.
Vizier fills the gap between Epic's built-in reporting and the questions your clinical leadership needs answered today. Export your Epic Clarity data using Epic's standard export function, upload that file to Vizier, and ask the questions that would otherwise sit in a report request queue for four weeks.
Epic handles
Vizier handles
Epic + Vizier
Stop customizing generic tools. Ask Your Vizier.
Export your Epic Clarity data, upload to Vizier, ask your first question in under ten minutes. No implementation project. No Cogito certification required.