EMR switching has become a really hot topic in healthcare IT and I predict that it’s only going to become more important. EHR vendors will continue to consolidate which will force healthcare organizations to switch EHR software. Health systems will continue to acquire healthcare organizations which will also drive EHR switching. Given these trends, it’s important to have a good answer to the question “Should we migrate our EHR data to the new EHR or not?”
Galen Healthcare Solutions has put out a detailed whitepaper on EHR data migration that does a great job highlighting best practices for EHR data migration based on their decade of clinical data migration experience. Together with the whitepaper, they offer these 10 reasons a healthcare organization should migrated their EHR data:
- Eliminate Legacy Systems
- Lower Costs
- One System for All
- Maximize Productivity
- Strengthen Compliance
- Prescribe Electronically
- Enhance Operational Efficiency
- Reduce Human Error
- A Greener Solution
- Meet Quality Measures
They obviously go into a lot more detail for each of these 10 points in their Free EHR switching whitepaper, but even just looking at the list it’s pretty compelling. At the end of the day for me, the overarching reason to migrate your EHR data is number 7 on the list: Enhancing Operational Efficiency. Is there anything less efficient than limping along an old EHR system that people quickly forget how to use? It’s inefficient for the IT people, but even less efficient for the end users that want access to the clinical data.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that EHR data migration is easy work. We’d like to think that you just export the data from your old EHR and import it into your new EHR. That’s now how it works. Check out the complex process that Galen uses to do an EHR data migration:
You can certainly take out some of the steps in this chart if you don’t care about the integrity of your data. Yep, that’s a reality that exists in no healthcare organization. The integrity of your health data really matters in healthcare. People’s lives are on the line.
The problem is that if the data is stuck in your old legacy EHR and not accessible, then it’s as good as gone. The ideal situation is to migrate your EHR data to your new system in a way that the integrity of the data is maintained. That’s something that takes real experience and expertise to do it right. However, when done right it you can gain all the benefits of accessible data along with the ability to sunset your old EHR application.
Have you switched EHR software? How did you approach EHR data migration? What would you have done the same or different?
Galen Healthcare Solutions is a sponsor of the Tackling EHR & EMR Transition Series of blog posts on Hospital EMR and EHR.
We help groups with data conversions all the time and we are always surprised to find out that the groups are often unaware that they can convert most of the data. It seems like they have been informed by others that only a few things can be converted. We like to offer a menu of elements that can be converted for them to choose from with our recommendations for what should be converted. For some groups, using our CareFinity system for archiving the old data is
the best solution. This product allows access to the old data, is cost effective, and data can be accessed via workstations as well as mobile devices like tablets and phones. For many groups, we host the archived data so they don’t have to worry about it any longer. This is a great solution when conversions are last minute due to mergers and acquisitions.
Joe,
Yep. There’s a lot of misinformation or outdated information out there about EHR conversions and what’s possible. I’m currently interested to see how data conversion will change in the new world of popular SaaS EHR vendors. That provides its own unique challenges for EHR data migration depending on the EHR vendor.