Five9 Fusion for Epic: Fast Track to Gold Stars

Epic's Gold Stars program changed significantly in 2025. Where it once rewarded health systems for installing Epic features, it now scores on adoption and meaningful utilization. Configuring Epic no longer earns stars. Using it — demonstrably, at scale, with structured data flowing back into the platform — does. 

For patient access leaders, this shift is both a wake-up call and an opportunity. And for health systems running Epic, it puts two tools at the center of the Gold Stars conversation: Epic Cheers and Five9 Fusion for Epic. 

Why Epic Cheers is the patient access tool you're underutilizing 

Epic Cheers is Epic's native CRM — built specifically for healthcare to power proactive patient outreach, care gap closure, referral follow-up, appointment reminders and contact center operations at scale. Unlike third-party CRM platforms that require costly integrations, Cheers lives inside the Epic ecosystem, using the same patient data your clinical teams already rely on.  

However, many health systems are running Epic Cheers and its capabilities in isolation from the contact center. The tool is configured. The data is there. But without a live connection between Cheers and the contact center, the utilization signals that the Epic Gold Stars program now measures are not generated. 

That is where Five9 Fusion for Epic comes in. 

Why Gold Stars status matters — and what's at stake 

Epic Gold Stars are more than a recognition program. They link measurable improvements in care delivery to business performance. Health systems that haven't prioritized adoption may see scores drop under the new rules, potentially affecting Honor Roll status and related incentives.  

Higher Gold Stars scores are associated with improvements in quality metrics — decreased hospital-acquired conditions, reduced length of stay, better patient outcomes — alongside operational and financial gains. Health systems on Epic's Honor Roll attract stronger physician partnerships, better payer relationships and increased patient trust. Falling behind on adoption scores carries real competitive consequences. 

For patient access centers specifically, Gold Stars evaluates exactly what Cheers is designed to deliver: proactive outreach completion rates, care gap closure, referral conversion, appointment adherence and contact center utilization of Epic's engagement tools. Every one of these metrics is directly influenced by how well the contact center and Cheers work together. 

How Five9 Fusion for Epic activates Cheers — and earns Gold Stars 

Five9 Fusion for Epic is amongst the first CCaaS platforms approved in Epic's Toolbox, Epic's own certification standard for native, API-driven integrations. It connects the contact center directly to Cheers without middleware, without separate logins and without the workflow fragmentation that prevents utilization data from flowing back into Epic in structured form. 

Here's what that connection produces in practice: 

1. Every inbound voice call becomes a Cheers utilization event. The Five9 Epic Agent Adapter delivers a unified agent desktop — embedding Five9 call controls directly inside Epic's Hyperdrive interface so agents never leave the clinical environment. When a patient calls, the Adapter automatically screen-pops the patient's Cheers record based on caller ID match, surfacing interaction history, open referrals, care gaps and recent outreach — before the agent speaks a single word.  

2. Every outbound voice call activates Cheers' engagement tracking. The Five9 Epic Agent Adapter enables one-click outbound dialing directly from within the patient's Cheers record — no separate dialer, no copy-and-paste, no system switching. The agent clicks the patient's number inside Cheers, the call initiates through Five9, and the full interaction — duration, outcome, appointment conversion, follow-up action — writes back to the Cheers campaign record. 

3. Referral and care gap work queues in Cheers drive automated outbound voice campaigns. Five9 connects directly to Cheers referral and care gap work queues, converting aging referral lists and population health flags into intelligent outbound voice campaigns — without agents manually reviewing a queue or dialing individual patients. When a referral ages past a defined threshold, Five9 initiates an outbound voice call, routes connected patients to a live agent with full Cheers context already loaded and writes every outcome back to the Cheers work queue record. 

4. No-show prevention runs as automated outbound voice outreach from Cheers data. The Five9 outbound campaign engine reads Cheers appointment and population health data, executing voice reminder campaigns calibrated to patient risk level and contact preference. For patients flagged as high-risk for no-show by Epic's predictive model, Five9 escalates from automated SMS to a live Voice AI Agent call — the intervention model shown to produce the greatest reduction in missed appointments.

4. Five9 Voice AI Agents extend Cheers voice utilization beyond staffing hours. Five9 Voice AI Agents handle routine scheduling requests, referral status inquiries and care gap outreach through natural-language voice conversations 24 hours a day. 

The case for acting now