Is your healthcare organization in the midst of EHR replacement? A merger or acquisition? Or, maybe it’s focused on consolidating outdated legacy EHR systems? If you’re creating a system decommissioning plan, the data management vendors you choose to work with are as important as the archiving product being offered. It’s necessary to evaluate both. Here’s a list of absolute essentials to help assess a potential data archiving partner before making a final selection. 10 QUALITIES TO LOOK FOR IN A LEGACY DATA ARCHIVING VENDOR Exhibits a strong reputation and breadth of experience working with data from a variety of systems Focused primarily on healthcare and able to provide references from similar organizations and projects Does not have a history of litigation or data breach Responsive and easy to do business with Routinely updates product to ensure high level security of records for the duration of the retention period Able to scale with client needs, such as a having a strategy for enabling compliance with the 21st Century Cures Act Does minimal to no outsourcing for its extract/transform/load (ETL) work Offers an in-depth legacy system discovery and proposal process that limits future change orders Offers a systematic on-boarding process and project management methodology Conducts frequent quality checkpoints from extraction through validation to archive deployment Ready to get your legacy data management plan on track with a partner who meets all these criteria? We’re ready to chat. Editor’s Note: This blog has been updated from the original post on April 3, 2019.