After expanding its hospital footprint with the McKesson acquisition in October of 2017, Allscripts recently announced it is buying Practice Fusion in a deal that is expected to close during the first quarter of 2018. This purchase aims to expand Allscript’s client base in the ambulatory/outpatient market.

The ambulatory electronic health record (EHR) market is in big-time growth mode. The global ambulatory EHR market is expected to reach $5.20 billion by 2021 from $3.92 billion in 2016, at a CAGR of 5.8% during the forecast period. The major drivers for the market include government support for the adoption of healthcare IT, growing usage of EHR solutions, and the need to curtail healthcare costs.

While there are many areas spurring this increase, e-prescribing is expected to witness the fastest growth in demand during the forecast period in the ambulatory EHR market according to industry reports.

Further, EHR giant Epic is expanding its product offering to provide additional options for the various-sized players within the healthcare landscape. Epic is expected to release its new Sonnet software in early 2018 – which is designed for small hospitals, physician groups and post-acute care facilities. This product leverages a compact method for installation, which only takes a few months. It also will be interoperable with its mid-size Utility and full-service All-Terrain products.

The target market for the Sonnet product is physician practices and smaller hospitals, such as critical access hospitals, which may benefit from the lower price points and shorter implementation times. Another target market is medium-sized community hospitals, which may want a lower starting price point with the option for a more advanced EHR version later on.

While EHR giants such Cerner and Epic may dominate the market, research shows no single company comprises even 20 percent of the EHR industry. Because no single vendor monopolizes the entire market, smaller vendors, local sales, and web-based offerings still have a chance of getting a reasonable foothold in the industry.

While EHR vendors are bustling with M&A activity, hospital merger and acquisition (M&A) activity has increased significantly in the past decade as well, with buyers and sellers looking to create operational, strategic, and financial value. Between 2008 and 2014, there were more than 750 hospital acquisitions or mergers. In a recent study by The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions and the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), they reported that, through M&A, health system investments in technology, quality improvement, ancillary services, or shared services can be spread across a broader base post-transaction. The study reported that nearly 40 percent of all survey respondents used the capital to upgrade or implement clinical information systems, the top-reported use of capital.

The healthcare IT landscape is being reinvented with market consolidation, M&A and technology advancements. What does this mean for your legacy health data systems?

Archiving Supports a Secure Solution for Legacy EHRs

A well-planned legacy data management strategy alleviates future IT costs, risks and burdens as platforms come and go. Long-term medical data archive vendors that know the EMR market inside and out offer secure solutions that ensure data integrity and meet HIPAA, state and agency medical record retention requirements.

If your organization is working through the burden of what to do with an acquired system or with having numerous outdated legacy systems, this might be the time to contact Harmony Healthcare IT, the makers of Health Data Archiver, for a consultation about system replacement and data retention.

The New Year offers a fresh opportunity to reflect on the state of healthcare data management and sharpen our collective focus on innovation, interoperability and legacy data security.

However, it is not good news that healthcare recently “stole” the headline as the number-one most breached industry in North America, surpassing the public sector and all other sectors for the first time in history.

Information security is top-of-mind for most healthcare organizations

As IT teams work to secure their networks and go-forward EHRs to guard against future attacks, there often are 30-40+ legacy data applications that could be sitting ducks for cyber-attacks.

It is not a surprise that vulnerabilities from aging applications and technologies is the number one concern IT executives cited with respect to cybersecurity in a recent survey by Grant Thornton and The Professional Services Council. The survey isn’t limited to just healthcare, but aging and outdated EHRs certainly plague the IT landscape at many healthcare organizations.

One of the easiest tools to aid in your cybersecurity strategy is creating a legacy data management plan to reduce exposure, secure the historical records in a protected archive and maintain access to the records should they be required in the future for eDiscovery or other requests.

We look forward to helping your organization make significant strides this year in consolidating outdated, vulnerable legacy data systems and ensuring your health system has an even more formidable defense against cyberattacks.

Plan to visit Harmony Healthcare IT at the HIMSS18 Annual Conference and Exposition March 5-9, 2018 at the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas.  Our team will be at booth #1454 and also at kiosk 8600-66 in the Cybersecurity Command Center.  Plus, plan to attend a cybersecurity-focused presentation by Rick Adams, Vice President of IT and Chief Security Officer at Harmony Healthcare IT. The presentation, set for 4:30 – 4:50 pm on Tuesday, March 6, 2018, is titled Defend Cyber Attack: Legacy System Decommissioning.

Rick and our team will provide insights about the state of healthcare information security as well as outline proactive steps your organization can take immediately to minimize risks and increase security, specifically with regard to legacy data.

We look forward to connecting at HIMSS18.

We currently are scheduling individual consultations and meetings to take place during the HIMSS event. Please reach out if you are interested in arranging a meeting.