An industry article reports that Epic leads the acute care hospital electronic medical record (EMR) market. And, through its Community Connect and Garden Plot offerings, Epic claims additional market share in the ambulatory care environment. A champion of interoperability, Epic announced that its community of nearly 2,000 hospitals and 45,000 clinics will have the ability to join a national health information exchange framework.
Also a champion of interoperability – focusing on legacy data – Harmony Healthcare IT is proud to have integrated with Epic years ago, offering Epic data conversion and archival solutions as a part of its HealthData Platform™. This includes its active archive, HealthData Archiver®, which can be found in Connection Hub on Epic Showroom. As a result, healthcare delivery organizations of any size that utilize Epic can harmonize their legacy data, keeping active and historical patient records synchronized and available for:
As a full electronic health record (EHR) conversion to Epic can be complex and expensive, only a subset of key clinical data – often problems, allergies, medications, and immunizations (PAMI) – from the previous one to three years is typically migrated to Epic. Harmony Healthcare IT can provide these Epic data conversion services. However, even a robust data conversion to Epic leaves some records and images behind – often from multiple displaced clinical, financial, and business applications – that must be retained and centralized. Healthcare delivery organizations transitioning to Epic need a trusted companion solution, such as HealthData Archiver®, for securing legacy data so that it is accessible, interoperable, and available for analytics.
Is Epic your go-forward EHR? Let’s rescue your castaway data from legacy systems. Watch this video—inspired by Epic UGM’s 2023 CASTAWAY theme—to learn more
Focused exclusively on healthcare, Harmony Healthcare IT is an award-winning data management firm with a proven ability to extract, migrate and archive data with 100% integrity.
Migrations to Epic require a strategy that considers both active and legacy data. Considering the legacy data at the forefront can save headaches later.
Having a well thought out plan makes for a seamless transition to Epic:
Take an inventory of legacy applications, capturing their key data elements and details such as system name and version, database type, size and specifications. HealthData Planner™ is a tool that can be leveraged to capture the application details and help prioritize a schedule to address each one.
Determine the best option for converting key clinical legacy data elements to Epic. Most organizations choose a partner like Harmony Healthcare IT. Our team and processes are flexible in fitting into Epic’s well laid out implementation plans and timelines, and accustomed to the Epic import specifications and testing approach:
Our enhanced data conversion offering, through a strategic relationship with DrFirst, employs artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to automate the process of migrating structured medication data from one EHR to Epic to inform clinical decision-making. To prohibit compromising mediation data during migration due to varying terminology, disparities in formulary service vendors, imperfect interoperability standards, and inconsistent use of national drug codes, Harmony Healthcare IT can employ AI/ML to reduce manual interventions and adverse drug events.
Consolidate and secure the unconverted legacy data to an active archive, like HealthData Archiver® or HealthData AR Manager®, so you can systematically decommission legacy systems. Minimize security and technical vulnerabilities while reducing costs associated with IT labor burden and infrastructure to support an out-of-production application portfolio. This discrete data storage supports search/sort/filter, 21st Century Cures Act interoperability FHIR transactions, rules-based record purging, rich release of information workflows, and research analytics.
Activate the discretely archived data for exchange and sharing with HealthData Integrator®, enabling Single-Sign On (SSO) access and better compliance with the information blocking provision of the 21st Century Cures Act. This includes an enterprise patient identity (EPI) backload from Epic into the active archive to increase the precision of Single Sign-On from Epic to the archive. Establishing an HL7 linkage keeps patient records synchronized as duplicates are identified or record modifications are made. Consider other integrations that could maximize efficiencies with and interoperability from the archive.
Your health data management strategy demands full access and “shareability” of patient, employee and business records.
Our solutions support data interoperability. Simplified workflows. Single Sign-On to the archive from within Epic, in patient context.
Epic users benefit from have convenient access the entire patient record at their fingertips.
HealthData Archiver® is available in Connection Hub on Epic Showroom and has been validated with successful implementations at many Epic customer sites. Single Sign-On (SSO) is available for users through Epic’s Hyperspace or upcoming Hyperdrive browsers. This provides Epic users with full and immediate access to secure and compliant records. Fast.
Epic’s Community Connect program allows health systems to extend their Epic instances to nearby medical groups, which gain access to Epic software without the need to hire internal support teams or purchase infrastructure. Almost 40,000 providers use Epic through Connect, which Epic recommends to medical groups because it creates shared patient records with local hospitals.
Epic Garden Plot is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering aimed at small, independent groups. When Epic Community Connect isn’t an option, Garden Plot gives groups an avenue to work with Epic directly.
For organizations moving to Epic Community Connect or Garden Plot, Harmony Healthcare IT can assist in the data migration needs, and then archive the data from the legacy systems in order to retain and access the historical records in a secure and cost-effective solution.
Yes, Epic has hundreds of application programming interfaces (APIs) that utilize USCDI v1 FHIR (a common language organizations use to better support data exchange) as well as other industry-standard APIs and Epic Public APIs. APIs allow information systems to communicate and transfer data back and forth between systems. This is a step forward for interoperability (information sharing) between healthcare providers, payers, patients, and other users for improved cooperative use of health data across the care continuum. With API standards in place, data movement and integration use cases may be addressed. Harmony Healthcare IT leverages Epic APIs as well as other APIs to enable our HealthData Integrator® solution.
Most Harmony Healthcare IT customers are larger Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs) with large portfolios of legacy applications displaced by Epic. As healthcare providers align their hospitals and clinics onto a single integrated platform to improve patient experience, streamline clinical workflows and enhance data analytics there is a need to migrate certain data to Epic and to archive the remaining legacy data. Generally, the most recent two years of clinical, financial, and business records are migrated to Epic with the remaining records migrated to the archive. The Harmony Healthcare IT team utilizes smarter conversions including artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the process of migrating structured data from EHRs to Epic and can resolve data fidelity and interoperability issues for more complete, clean, and consumable clinical data.
To ensure compliance with the highest level of data privacy regulations, Harmony Healthcare IT’s ETL Environment, HealthData Platform™, Data Center, and Workstations have earned certified status by HITRUST for information security. This achievement places Harmony Healthcare IT in an elite group of organizations worldwide that have earned this certification. Further, Harmony Healthcare IT supports data privacy compliance efforts by migrating health and operational data to meet regulatory guidelines and record retention policies. HealthData Archiver® aids in compliance activities with its audit trails, break the glass, error correction/addenda features, record find and search ability, and security capabilities. Harmony Healthcare IT leverages deep industry experience to support the highest level of compliance before, during and after a migration.
A transition to Epic, coupled with M&A growth, builds an inventory of legacy applications to rationalize.
They share advice about converting and decommissioning legacy systems while working with Harmony Healthcare IT.
Learn the importance of patient identity matching and options for managing it across an organization.
Whether you are planning a move to Epic, or are already on it, one of our experts will reach out to discuss your system inventory and an action plan to get started.