The Organization Advanced Vascular Surgery, an independently owned and operated division of Paragon Health, is a specialty medical practice servicing patients with vascular and venous conditions throughout Michigan. The organization has three surgeons and two nurse practitioners across six locations. The Situation In 2019, Advanced Vascular Surgery underwent a transition from SRS to AdvancedMD. This electronic health record (EHR) transition left the organization with an abundance of records that needed to be saved off a dying server. Then, in 2021 Advanced Vascular Surgery made the decision to move from AdvancedMD to Epic EHR through an Epic Community Connect partner. The vast majority of the organization’s patients were using Epic through their primary care providers, so this move would enhance the continuity of care for Advanced Vascular Surgery patients. In addition to the EHR transitions, Advanced Vascular Surgery’s PACS system, Medstreaming, announced their system was moving to cloud-based services only and their on-premises solution would no longer be supported. The organization needed to find a solution to save these medical images to adhere to record retention guidelines. Advanced Vascular Surgery had two options: either purchase a new server, transfer the images and pay additional ongoing service on the server, or, implement an archive solution to host the legacy records and images. The Solution Advanced Vascular Surgery viewed the server option as expensive and archaic. So, the organization partnered with Harmony Healthcare IT to archive the medical images they faced losing and to consolidate their legacy records from SRS and AdvancedMD into HealthData Archiver®. HealthData Archiver® provided a complete cloud based medical image archive that includes a comprehensive DICOM Viewer in the standard Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine image format. This solution supports the modalities Advanced Vascular Surgery’s PACS system required—cardiology and radiology. For example, bilateral carotid, triple A’s (aortic aneurism), and vein mapping images are stored and viewable. Streamlining our systems was one of the smartest decisions our practice has made. The consolidation has greatly enhanced continuity of care, simplified workflows for our staff, and provided significant cost savings.” Jo Stannard – Administrator, Advanced Vascular Surgery Benefits & Results Centralization. The historical records and images from three systems are now accessible in one location, HealthData Archiver®. Ease of use. The archive provides a seamless process for accessing legacy data and images and is userfriendly for staff and physicians alike. Cost savings. The return on investment increased as each legacy system was decommissioned. Knowledgeable staff. A dedicated project manager from Harmony Healthcare IT provided customer support throughout the archive project Lesson Learned Obtaining data from the legacy vendor for migration can be time-consuming and challenging, regardless of whether that data is hosted or on-premises. When Advanced Vascular Surgery realized they needed to move images from their on-premises instance of Medstreaming to a new solution, they had to work with Medstreaming’s support team to determine the best plan of action. If they disconnected the server, they would have lost everything. This process took a lot of back and forth. Since getting data from the legacy vendor can take some time, it’s critical to get ahead of the situation. DICOM Use Case A patient comes in with history of a triple A (aortic aneurism). The physician can pull up the current image in Medstreaming and compare it to historical images within HealthData Archiver® DICOM Viewer. With the measuring tool in DICOM Viewer, the physician can measure the image and document the comparison in the current PACS system, Medstreaming. The physicians and patients alike can be confident the images they need will be there.