The beginning of the story at Magnolia Regional Medical Center may sound familiar. The 200-bed hospital in Mississippi needed to replace its EHR to better meet its needs. In this case, the MEDITECH Magic EHR gave way to the newer MEDITECH 6.1 platform. Two years of clinical data was migrated to the new system, which left more than 20 years of legacy clinical and financial data housed in silos across each facility that was still needed for HIM, legal and other record retention purposes. Magnolia’s IT team needed a legacy data management strategy and plan, stat. They also needed a data management partner that could deliver. This is where the storyline picks up its pace. In a brief with John Lynn, Founder & Chief Editor at Healthcare IT Today, Magnolia’s CIO, Brian Davis and Jim Hammer, SVP at Harmony Healthcare IT, share helpful data archiving project insights and outcomes. One key take away: Compare apples to apples and archives to archives Davis shares that one of the keys to the project’s success was choosing the right vendor partner with the right experience. In this case, the best-suited vendor with a robust solution to archive eight legacy applications, 26 legacy databases and more than 350,000 patient records. To ensure it fully vetted its options for vendor partners, the Magnolia team developed a detailed 26-point matrix to evaluate several vendor partners archive solutions and services across seven categories: Usability Functionality Reporting Vendor Reputation/Support Implementation Cost Security Harmony Healthcare IT outperformed the other two finalists. Top vendor selection priorities where Harmony Healthcare IT scored especially high included: Detailed Functionality – Harmony Healthcare IT demonstrated a superior ability to wind down A/R, fulfill release of information requests, and deliver on a record purging options per the record retention policy. Single Sign-on – Harmony Healthcare IT offered a game-changer workflow, providing clinicians and the HIM team immediate access to historical records from within MEDITECH. Deep Systems Experience – Harmony Healthcare IT proved to have a breadth of experience with multiple legacy software brands. This was important to Magnolia as its application portfolio included a collection of legacy EHRs with a mix of business, financial, HR, clinical and non-clinical records. Solid value – Harmony Healthcare IT proposed low reoccurring costs and a fair total cost of ownership compared to competitors. “Harmony far exceeded the other vendors across the board,” shared Davis, who added that the project implementation delivered on promises made during the sales process. “Harmony’s project management methodology is stellar in the industry. I don’t know if we could have asked for the project to go any smoother.” This archiving project at Magnolia Regional Medical Center positions the organization well for fulfilling future release of information requests from patients and winding down accounts receivable. It will also provides Magnolia with a scalable solution should additional legacy data sources be added to the archive through merger and acquisition. Are you looking ahead at your legacy data plans? Let’s connect.