Epic Swoops Up 100+ EHR Competitor Accounts: Legacy Data Impact

Data Life Cycle: Legacy Health Systems

The Epic display at the HIMSS18 conference in Las Vegas illustrated that 115 health organizations have or are in the process of switching from other EHRs to Epic (which equates to up to 115 displaced, soon-to-be legacy systems).  And, why wouldn’t providers be moving to Epic and other market leaders?  In a recent HealthcareDive article about the evolving product features of today’s EHRs, it states: Legacy EHR vendors, staring down increased demand for interoperability, are remixing their products to keep with the times and customer needs.

What does this mean for legacy data?

Access to the complete patient narrative, including historical records stored outside of Epic and other leading EHRs, is of paramount concern for most provider organizations as they migrate to newer technology.  Federal, state and facility record retention regulations make it critical for healthcare delivery organizations to seek a secure storage solution for historical records, especially once they’re ready to shed the risk, labor and cost associated with keeping displaced EHR applications up and running.  Post EHR migration, the legacy patient data needs to seamlessly interact with the go-forward system to provide access to a comprehensive clinical narrative for a patient.

Create a Health Data Life Cycle Management Strategy

In most cases, it is cost prohibitive to migrate all the records from a legacy EHR into a new go-forward EHR. The benefits of creating a strong legacy data management strategy include: cost reduction, risk mitigation, compliance with both security standards and record retention mandates, simplified access to data and an opportunity to merge decade’s worth of data from disparate software applications into a secure long-term storage and retrieval center.

Harmony Healthcare IT‘s HealthData Archiver® is a leading solution for healthcare organizations that are faced with system replacement, acquisition or migration. Is your team ready to create a legacy data management strategy?

Our team of data experts at Harmony Healthcare IT developed a process that has helped hundreds of ambulatory and acute care organizations evaluate their legacy clinical, financial, human resources and ERP system portfolio to create a Health Data Life Cycle Management Strategy that works. The process guides providers through a system inventory, financial forecast and system prioritization for decommissioning legacy systems enterprise-wide. It provides details to outline a five point strategy that is customized for each organization and rounded out with a commitment for collaborative execution. Perhaps the best part of the strategy is that it identifies significant areas to mitigate risks and provide cost savings.

Regardless of where your organization stands in terms of keeping your current EHR, or replacing some or all of your systems, it is important to include a strategy for the complete life cycle of the data in your care — from creation to archival to destruction — all according to your record retention policy.

We’re here. We’re ready.  Contact a consultant from Harmony Healthcare IT.

Mar 22 2018

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