Healthcare Compliance Officers have a broad role to maintain regulatory and legal best practices within their organization.

In terms of medical record management, Healthcare Compliance Officers are responsible for payer and governmental audits as well as e-discovery and investigation into patient histories for legal matters. The comprehensive and important role of ensuring the integrity, security and availability of health information is at the top of the to-do list for the Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) and their team. Harmony Healthcare IT supports these vital compliance efforts by migrating health and operational data to meet regulatory guidelines and record retention policies.

We’ve identified five compliance-oriented challenges that can be mitigated with our cloud-hosted HealthData Archiver^® solution:

1. Search Ease – Providing required health and business records during litigation doesn’t have to be a tall order. Planning ahead with the 10-step Preparing for eDiscovery checklist from AHIMA will help the organization take a multi-disciplinary approach to be ready for searching. And, including an active archive* in those plans supports efficient and cost-effective health record management. With legacy data stored in a secure and searchable active archive, search requests are simplified, and costs are lowered, with access to data search and filtering capabilities. This matters, as there often are 1,000 pages discovered vs. the 1 page actually entered as an actual exhibit in major trials, and search costs can range from $5,000 to $30,000 per gigabyte.
2. Record Retention Compliance – There is a lot to track and manage in terms of medical record retention. When determining how to comply with state regulations, compliance teams need to consider their strategy for retention that may include:
   • Maintaining the legacy system (which can be costly and present technology and security risks in the future)
   • EHR data conversion (converting the data into the go-forward system – which can be costly and complex)
   • Printing/scanning the records (which is labor intensive and could be cumbersome for searching)
   • Migrating and storing discrete data elements in an active archive (provides a long-term return on investment plus an ease of retrieving records)
3. Security – As the #1 most cyberattacked industry, healthcare is getting hit hard and of the 93% who were breached in recent years, more than half were breached again (and even again). Network servers are almost always the target for hacking-related breaches with legacy systems providing easy entry points for attack. In a HIMSS cybersecurity survey, 69% indicated that they had some sort of legacy operating systems in place. An active archive provides a secure path forward and an opportunity to consolidate and decommission legacy servers which decreases risks. As an organization that puts security at the forefront, Harmony Healthcare IT’s data handling processes are HITRUST Certified to ensure our offering reaches HIPAA standards and beyond.
4. Audit Trails – Privacy and security for legacy data is as important as for active EHR records. Within HealthData Archiver^®, rights and activities can be restricted and audited by user, role, group, and data domain/source with built-in, role-based security and access controls. User audit logs are HIPAA-compliant and include the unique user ID, data subject ID, function performed, and date/time event was performed.  With Third-Party Auditing Integration, unusual user activity may be monitored to prevent internal threats.
5. Break the Glass – Protecting the privacy and security of all medical records, both current and legacy – including those of high-profile patients – is important. HealthData Archiver^® has numerous features built-in to manage, audit and protect legacy health records. Break the Glass provides:
   • End user access to privileged patient information only when necessary or in the event of an emergency, requiring that a reason to access the patient record be indicated
   • A Client Administrator option to add a Gatekeeper who is responsible for managing Care Team Member access for Highly Classified patients
   • Additional security measures, including explicit auditing of user authentication, authorization, and data level access

These five features and many others within HealthData Archiver^® support the vital work of the nation’s healthcare compliance teams. Our team sends its sincere appreciation to Compliance Officers for all that they do every day.

Looking for a partner to step up your healthcare compliance efforts?

Let’s connect.

*The client is responsible for determining what data should be maintained in the HealthData Archiver^® for compliance purposes. 

Note: This blog was updated from a previous version published on Sept. 24, 2020.

Now more than ever, data has a big job to do. This includes the widespread expansion of wearable devices and remote patient monitoring that will up the volume of data points and data sharing across the health continuum that aims to provide better outcomes. However, there’s a lot that has to happen behind the scenes to enable a few simple clicks to provide value and usable information.  And, in some respects, there’s a long way to go before data truly is able to seamlessly travel everywhere it needs to be.

In terms of interoperability and big data analytics, one key area of focus in healthcare is to cut through the “infodemic,” which refers to the rapid spread of both accurate and inaccurate information about something, such as disease. There is a need for a central information repository that would improve the gathering and comparing of data related to acute epidemics. Access to data assets, broadening the commercial data that is available and bringing data providers and decision-makers together are all areas that need attention.

Health data sharing and integration are viewed as the game changers for the future.

The ONC Cures Act Final Rule, which implements requirements detailed in the 21^st Century Cures Act, could sideline some EHRs who are unable to evolve to deliver the more stringent interoperability features that will allow health data to easily flow between providers, payers and patients.

The future of health IT is focused on integrating more data points into the patient’s health record and to have the technology tools that can track, record, share, save and deliver the information wherever it needs to be with just a few clicks.

This includes remote patient monitoring which can alert a patient and their physician of an issue that needs attention and help provide more data points to help with better care outcomes.

But that is just the beginning.

One exciting collaboration is focused on how data and advanced analytics could help predict and alert global leaders prior to a health crisis. The Trinity Challenge is a new initiative calling for ideas utilizing data-driven research and analytics to learn from the global response to COVID-19 in order to build stronger resilience in the future. The 22 founding members include private, public and social sectors who will review and reward millions in funding for the most promising data-driven innovations.

This is big. This is a global effort to bring the best data ideas from concept to fruition for the greater good of humanity. We like that.

We get that expectations for technology are evolving. This is our mindset every day as we continue to innovate and expand the depth, breadth and interoperability of HealthData Archiver^®®, our cloud-based data management platform. Our offerings include health data lifecycle management consulting, extraction, migration, retention and destruction of patient, employee and business records for small ambulatory clinics to enterprise-wide health systems. With experience with over 500 different clinical, financial and administrative software brands, we deliver data wherever it needs to be.

Is your team focused on the evolving needs of data collection and sharing? Does this involve replacing or upgrading your EHR and looking for the optimal solution to retain and enable health history? An active archive like HealthData Archiver^® could support your success.

HealthData Archiver^® is live in production on Epic’s App Orchard. Harmony Healthcare IT has been ranked #1 in the 2020 Best in KLAS Software & Services Report as a Category Leader in Data Archiving, and as the top data extraction and migration healthcare IT company according to Black Book^™ Market Research in 2019 and 2020. We were also selected by Modern Healthcare as one of the 2019 Best Places to Work in Healthcare.  Most important, 100% of our customers surveyed have included our organization in their long-term plans – and that’s a data point that truly matters to us.

Ready to connect?

New leadership roles and job titles are emerging. For example, we’re seeing the role of chief marketing officer redefined as chief growth officer, chief experience officer, chief brand officer and more. The goal, as reported in AdAge, is to consolidate duties with executives who have broader mandates. It’s about transformation and cross-organizational collaboration to better meet the organization’s goals.

Ultimately, these new roles are aligned with how to better drive organizational success.

What about healthcare?

Enter the Chief Outcomes Officer.

This new role is charged with driving improved outcomes, lowering costs and delivering higher patient satisfaction scores.  But how can these pillars be achieved?

The intent is that the chief outcomes officer will free up clinicians from administrative variability and burdensome documentation demands, bring value-based programs to life, and ensure that each patient receives a comprehensive set of services at the highest quality.

The Chief Outcomes Officer has a Tall Order with a Lot of Variables.

Key to the chief outcomes officer’s success is measuring outcomes rather than outputs. It’s a work smarter, not harder approach which is especially true in the digital world of healthcare where transformational initiatives are leading innovations.

The chief outcomes officer may join the chief strategy officer and chief innovation officer to develop big picture pathway planning. The chief outcome officer adds in the needed tangible delivery and measurement focus with a priority of aligning the needs of providers, health plans and patients. C-suite leaders agree with these shifts as only 14% of them surveyed in Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends Report believe that the traditional organizational model with hierarchical job levels based on expertise in a specific area makes their organization highly effective.

It’s also about alignment as organizations try new, or improved, ways to get every person in the organization pointed in the direction of the outcomes the company wants to advance. According to Forbes: Research has shown that when employees spent just 15 minutes per day reflecting on what they learned that day, they began to perform 23% better after just 10 days.

Future Success in Healthcare Requires Adapting and Operating Differently.

New ways of doing business require shifts in values of what is important and how major efforts can be accomplished. We’ve developed a few points about how lifecycle data management and active archiving are tools that can support the chief outcomes officer’s mission to drive success.

Legacy Health Data Supports Three Key Drivers for Improved Outcomes in Healthcare:

1. 1. Freeing Clinicians from Administrative Burdens – At a time when physicians report spending more time with the EHR than with their patients, having access to the complete medical record with a single sign-on is a key advantage that HealthData Archiver^® delivers in an efficient, secure manner. Instant accessibility to the historical record is a game changer and available for most EMR brands, including Epic, Cerner, Allscripts, Athena, NextGen and other major brands. It also supports numerous formats including: Oauth/OpenID, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML 2.0) and others.
   2. Bringing Value-Based Programs to Life – Cutting costs and increasing operational efficiencies are two major benefits of an active archive. And, as technology and innovation continue to allow more procedures to be done outside the hospital and help hospitals increase efficiency, improve patient outcomes and save costs (according to Moody’s), access to the complete patient narrative will be even more important. Creating a long-term data management strategy should be on every healthcare providers to-do list as the volume of health data doubles faster than any other industry and having a smart, active archive can support retention requirements, satisfy interoperability demands and contribute to operational efficiency. Having both active and historical data readily available when needed helps providers help their patients improve their health, reduce the effects of chronic disease, and live healthier lifestyles.
   3. Ensuring Patients Receive a Comprehensive Set of High Quality Services – Health data continues to play an even more critical role to strengthen healthcare delivery. Health data management supports comprehensive healthcare delivery to patients by supporting telehealth, by providing immediate access to legacy health records at the point of care, and by enabling the information flow for these records as required by compliance to the 21^st Century Cures Act Rules on interoperability and patient access, which will be enforced beginning in 2021. Patients are becoming more and more interested in having online access to their medical records and 67% of consumers in a recent survey said they would consider changing their doctor or hospital provider in the coming year after they discovered their health record was not shareable, available or was blocked. Having the right technology solutions onboard directly support the ability to deliver the highest quality patient care.

Ranked #1 in the category of data archiving by KLAS Research and with successful experience with more than 500 different EHR systems, Harmony Healthcare IT stands ready to help chief outcomes officers and the entire data governance team deliver high-quality data management services that bring outstanding results.

For those of us deeply invested in health IT, there are opportunities for innovation like never before. And, there’s no time like the present to dig in and deliver what the world needs from the technology and systems backing the front lines of healthcare.

“Looking forward, we see a tremendous need for health IT to advance and deliver like never before,” shares Tom Liddell, CEO at Harmony Healthcare IT. “We are digging in with expanded product offerings, and continuing to tackle the industry’s most complex data management projects to assist our provider partners in being even more nimble and prepared for the seamless flow of health information that will drive success in 2021 and beyond.”

Liddell believes 2021 will realize five trends in healthcare IT:

1. 1. Healthcare Industry will Become More Vigilant with Security – Healthcare has taken many security blows in recent years and, unfortunately, 2021 is expected to be more of the same – if not worse. Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that in 2021, healthcare will suffer two to three more cyberattacks than the average for other industries. IBM reports that healthcare incurs the highest breach cost of any industry: $7.13 million per incidence in 2020, up 10% over 2019. We will see more hospitals, health systems and health IT vendors seek a HITRUST CSF^® certification to establish industry-standard controls that protect them from threats. We will also see an influx of provider organizations consolidating silos of data stored from outdated systems that offer some of the easiest entry points for hackers. Active archiving with products like HealthData Archiver^® will be a defensive move made by healthcare organizations to protect its EHR, ERP and HR data.

1. 1. Cures Act will Promote Interoperability to Consumers – Access to their own health information is quickly becoming an expectation as 67% of consumers in a recent survey said they would consider changing their doctor or hospital providers in the coming year after they discovered their health record was not shareable, available or was blocked. The upcoming enforcement of the 21^st Century Cures Act – which promotes expanded patient access to their electronic information – will start to see real implementation in 2021. As healthcare providers continue to evolve how health and business data is shared among typical industry stakeholders, patients may take a front seat, receiving their medical records on smart phone apps. To meet these requests with the full patient narrative (including records from the active EHR as well as from archives), it will be important to have a data management plan that consolidates and stores disparate, legacy, clinical data sets and enables them for sharing (e.g., FHIR transactions). Industry experts suggest healthcare organizations look at meeting the finalized rules sooner rather than later and as an opportunity for business success, citing that adopting the rules as soon as possible represents a huge business opportunity.

1. 1. Cloud and Hybrid Cloud will Gain Adoption – With 30% of the world’s stored data being health-related and providers focusing even more on interoperability and care coordination, cloud-based hosting contributes to secure and efficient communication among patients, physicians, hospitals and payers. Healthcare provider IT teams who haven’t already migrated their data storage to the cloud likely will take another look at the benefits in the coming year, which include: cost savings, increased security, reduced downtime, improved connectivity/accessibility and faster deployment. To help with these discussions, we’ve developed five questions to answer when evaluating off-site hosted vs. on-premises for EMR archiving.

1. 1. Hospital CIOs will Strive to Contain Costs – IT budgets, like most areas in healthcare, were impacted and continue to be affected by COVID-19. Making the most sound and efficient business decisions will continue throughout 2021. One area that is ripe for cost savings is to consolidate the IT portfolio and archive legacy data according to retention guidelines. To help, we’ve developed a resource: Five Ways to Find Cost Savings with Legacy Data Management and also suggestions on how to lower or eliminate costs from software, hardware, training, legal liability, cybersecurity risk and lost opportunities. According to KLAS Research, 85% of healthcare providers report positive financial impacts when they retired legacy IT systems and opted for health data archiving.

1. Lifecycle Data Management will Take an Important Seat at the Table – While data management isn’t new, including the complete data lifecycle in long-term plans is a growing trend among healthcare governance teams. Governance teams are taking a more systematic approach to application rationalization and portfolio management to avoid unnecessary risks and to contain costs. As acquisitions continue to merge multiple EHR systems, a solid plan for overall legacy system and data management with buy-in from a cross functional governance team becomes valuable on many levels.

While 2020 didn’t turn out as anyone predicted, 2021 will demand a vigilant focus to protect ePHI while also storing it in the cloud and sharing it.

Health IT is expected to show growth over the coming years. US expenditures on EHRs are forecast to total $19.9 billion in 2024, an increase of about $5 billion from 2019 figures. As regulations and demands continue to increase for what the EHR is expected to accomplish, research suggests that EHR replacements will continue to be commonplace. That means that a solid record retention strategy and active archive plan will be needed.

Ranked #1 in the category of data archiving by KLAS Research and with successful experience with more than 500 different EHR systems, Harmony Healthcare IT team members stand ready to roll up their sleeves and help healthcare IT teams work through their health data management projects.

Reach out if you’d like to discuss how our team could help you achieve your 2021 goals.