System Decommissioning & Data Archiving for Merger & Acquisition

Merging two or more healthcare delivery organizations presents information technology and data challenges. Which EMR system stays? Which one goes? What other duplicate clinical, financial, accounting, materials management and human resources systems need to get decommissioned? The process of evaluating and determining which system becomes legacy and how the data from that system will get preserved to meet record retention mandates and be available to HIM and clinicians is an important one that can impact the success of a merger or acquisition.

Harmony Healthcare IT is regularly called upon to strategize and execute on a legacy data management plan as a result of Acquiring and Merging healthcare systems. That plan may entail extraction, migration, conversion, retention or all of the above. Generally speaking, the business value of adopting an active archive to keep legacy records secured, searchable, manageable, and HIPAA-compliant is in the best interest of the organization. A return on investment is generally realized within 18-24 months by shedding costs from legacy system licensing, maintenance, support, and the internal IT labor burden.

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Healthcare mergers and acquisitions is a key driver in our business. We have a lot of clients that are doing a lot of work in M&A. And when they’re acquiring other health systems, ambulatory practices, hospitals, there’s an immediate need when they move those folks that they’re acquiring to the go-forward application. It’s creating a significant amount of legacy record applications that are out there. And once the the those those providers are on the go-forward system, we quickly can dive in there and archive those legacy applications, putting them in our single HealthData Platform container and serves a couple functions. A first things first, we’re going to be reducing cost and we’re going to be able to allow our clients to turn off any third party legacy spend, whether it be host or maintenance as quickly as possible. That’s one component that obviously gets the attention of the CFO when we talk to the CMIOs and HIM the other big component is, is a continuity of care. So the sooner we can get those legacy applications put into our HealthData Platform, we allow that data that sits in our platform to be available through a Single Sign-On button with patient context for immediate access to that legacy information that wasn’t migrated into the go forward but archived into our platform for continuity of care. A third benefit of archiving legacy data in a merger and acquisition scenario is the security situation when this happens. And a lot of these folks are moving to a single platform. They’re leaving all these legacy applications behind that are sitting on a variety of different platforms, on a varied degree of risk by archiving and putting them all into the HealthData Platform. We’re reducing risk by putting them all into our HITRUST certified data center and relying on just two single sources of truth for data. Go-forward application for all that go-forward data and HealthData Platform for all the different legacy applications that may have existed prior to that merger and acquisition taking place.

Organizational and Data Storage Scalability

Harmony Healthcare IT is well equipped to extract, convert and migrate data from over 550 clinical, financial and administrative software brands. As your M&A team continues to evaluate future opportunities, you’ve got a secure and trusted data storage platform you can continue to deploy, which doesn’t limit your options for organizational growth.

M&A Technical Playbook

Minimizing the number of redundant or out-of-production applications is a key ingredient to the long-term success of a merger or acquisition. Working with a trusted health data management partner like Harmony Healthcare IT helps provider organizations keep their IT portfolio streamlined, projects on target and budgets under control. By simplifying the environment—as much as possible—to one go-forward EHR and one active archive for legacy clinical data, there are cost, workflow and security benefits to be realized. Plus, there is a strategy put in place to help manage technology decisions and leverage discounted pricing when additional organizations are added through M&A.

Epic Community Connect/Cerner CommunityWorks

HealthData Archiver^®, Harmony Healthcare IT’s long-term legacy record storage platform, is easily integrated through Single Sign On (SSO) with go-forward EHRs like Epic, Cerner, Allscripts and athenaNet. For those EHRs with community interoperability offerings (i.e., Epic Community Connect or Cerner CommunityWorks), a tailored pricing schema for data migration and retention may be provided by Harmony Healthcare IT. This allows for a predictable onboarding process as community hospitals, ambulatory clinics or other entities connect to a larger EHR network.

FAQ

Why is data archiving so important during a merger or acquisition?

Hospitals often have multiple EHR platforms in use due to historical factors, mergers and acquisitions or department-specific needs. When there is a merger or acquisition, EHR technology often is inherited from the newly-joined entity. Suddenly the cost of maintaining two (or more) systems hits the bottom line. Many healthcare organizations have decided to consolidate their infrastructure and implement a single enterprise-wide EHR solution. This triggers a decision about how to manage legacy data that still needs to be retained to meet regulatory requirements like the 21st Century Cures Act. Active archives support this consolidation and ensure the clinical, financial, and business records are secure and accessible to meet interoperability, compliance, and regulatory requirements.

What are the initial steps in decommissioning healthcare data for a merger or acquisition?

The first steps to rationalize a technology portfolio during a merger or acquisition are to take inventory of which applications each acquired hospital or clinic uses. Next, decide which applications require immediate attention. Be sure to pay attention to the application’s direct costs, maintenance agreements, security vulnerabilities, and whether the data is hosted on-prem or with the source application vendor. Next, create a rationalization playbook to ensure there is a consistent strategy for the future across multiple M&As. It also is important to include a budget for this work and establish a cross-sectional governance team that will help guide current and future data management initiatives.

How do we decide which system should be decommissioned during the merger or acquisition process?

It is important to plan early for rationalization during the merger and acquisition process to save time, money, and stress. Some large healthcare organizations can have 30-40 legacy systems that are kept up and running in read-only mode. These systems deliver little production value, yet account for substantial maintenance costs. It may be a smart move to decommission and archive more expensive applications sooner rather than later.
When there is a decision to implement one EHR across the organization, this can trigger decisions about migrating and converting some (usually the most recent 18-24 months) of the data to the new system and migrating the rest to an archive. This can be a cost-effective and efficient data management move that serves the organization by reducing the number of in-production applications, while maintaining access for clinical, release of information or legal needs.