Health Information Professionals (HIP) Week, April 18 – 24, 2021 is an opportunity to celebrate the impact that HIP teams have on the quality of patient care globally. The HIP approach is that the person is connected to the data, ensuring information stays human and relevant. Harmony Healthcare IT (HHIT) values the work and mission of colleagues involved in health information management, working as a trusted partner toward the big picture of improving healthcare outcomes. Aligned 100% with HIP priorities, HHIT focuses on advancing technology solutions to support the top three HIP priorities of Social Determinants of Health (SDoH), Patient Identification and Matching, and the elimination of Information Blocking. Active Archiving Supports HIP’s Top Priorities: Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) is the growing practice of telling the whole patient story which requires clinical data as well as socioeconomic factors that influence overall health. These factors such as economic stability, social connections, access to healthcare and behavioral health, supports improved patient outcomes and a patient-centered experience. There already are social determinant ICD-10-CM codes that can be included in the patient record to help track potential health hazards and provide key influencers in health outcomes. There is research to support this practice and a growing movement to develop system-wide strategies for wider care practices. The overall goal is whole-person healthcare. Active Archiving Supports SDoH by providing a single sign-on for the clinician to access the complete (archived) patient record from within the current EHR. Active archiving of legacy health data supports the comprehensive patient record and is adaptable, searchable and accessible to meet current and future information queries at the point of care which enables the provider to have the whole story to help treat the whole person. Patient Identification and Matching (PIM) – Errors in patient identification and matching are one of healthcare’s more troubling problems. Finding solutions to PIM errors is essential to achieve healthcare’s primary goals – enhanced patient safety, advanced interoperability and improved patient outcomes. Active Archiving Supports Patient Identification and Matching – Experts state that most, if not all, wrong-patient errors are preventable. As migrators of legacy data, we take patient matching very seriously, using tools at hand to ensure that patient information is as accurate as possible. There has been talk, for decades, of creating a National Patient ID, which could support patient matching in the future, but until then, there are many master patient indexing processes taking place within different health systems and with EHR and archiving vendors that Harmony Healthcare IT navigates and utilizes to tie archived records to the right patient in the go-forward EHR. Information Blocking – One of the most unique and innovative rules from the 21st Century Cures Act relates to information blocking. The rule was designed to give patients greater control over their personal health data and make it easier to share patient records between organizations and with patients. There also are provisions to ensure that EHR vendors do not block or impede the export of usable patient records when a provider is switching health IT systems to ensure the complete patient narrative is being transferred, and not just a summary of care record. Active Archiving Supports Improved Interoperability – To accurately fulfill requests for information with the full patient narrative (including records from the active EHR as well as from archived records), 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. Recognizing that HealthData Archiver® is a respected solution counted on by HIM professionals nationwide, Harmony Healthcare IT is committed to strengthening its platform and delivering capabilities necessary for HIM professionals to more easily, efficiently and securely do their job. Since 2006, the Harmony Healthcare IT team of data experts has extracted, migrated, and retained billions of patient, employee or business records and petabytes of data from over 500 different clinical, financial, and administrative EHR and ERP software brands. That includes the major leading EHR brands such as Allscripts, Cerner, CPSI/Evident, eClinicalWorks, Epic, GE, Greenway, Healthland, McKesson, MEDHOST, MEDITECH, NextGen, Practice Partner and many more. No matter the EHR platform, the award-winning Harmony team is ready to talk about how instituting a HIPAA-compliant, long-term record storage solution like HealthData Archiver® can cut costs, fortify cybersecurity defenses, and streamline clinical and HIM workflows for increased efficiency enterprise-wide. Congratulations to everyone involved in HIP Week – Harmony Healthcare IT couldn’t do data archiving without you. #HIPWeek21 For more information about HIP Week, visit the hipweek.org website to explore first-hand accounts of how health information professionals impact the healthcare ecosystem and patient care. The website also features thought leadership pieces on advancing patient care and it recognizes the professionals and the organizations who support our goal of keeping health information human.