Migrating Your EHR Data
EHR Data Migration can look daunting. But there are many reasons a practice may wish to migrate its EHR data. But even after weighing costs and benefits of porting data elsewhere, some practices choose to avoid a potentially beneficial migration because of the complicated nature of the transition. However, there are many benefits that are well worth the effort of a successful migration of EHR data.
Why Do People Migrate Their EHR Data?
Some practices choose to migrate their data as a result of dissatisfaction with their EHR vendor. Others migrate because of a hospital acquisition, or to secure a vendor certified for Meaningful Use, or to move away from a vendor that could not certify.
And in the era of Big Data and analytics, it’s increasingly common to see EHR data migrations to vendors or analytics platforms with superior data management and analysis services.
A surge in EHR utilization has also heralded a rise in competition amongst EHR vendors. As of 2014, over 80% of office-based physicians had adopted EHRs. This rush in utilization has led to improved service offerings by vendors, spurring more movement of practice data.
The Cleanse: What Can You Clean Up in Your EHR
While EHR data migration can be stressful for any practice or physician, the process also presents itself as an opportunity to clean up systems and organize data. And practices don’t have to accomplish this all on their own. EHR vendors can assist with porting and cleaning up data, presenting a valuable benefit to migrating practices.
This type of project is especially helpful for the cleaning of legacy data, which is often essential to best practices (but frequently impossibly dis-organized).
What if You Need to Convert Migrated Data?
If a data conversion is required, vendors can support this as well. Often, legacy data requires conversion when undergoing EHR data migration to a new system. But in some cases, such data may not need to be immediately accessible. Experts recommend nonetheless that providers know how to access this information efficiently if the need arises.
Some firms may look to hire a data analyst who will have a better understanding what data you have to convert. These professionals advise that if not all your data is being converted; you need to know what is and where it’s going to be so you can get access to it.
Categorizing legacy data and conversions can be another great way to clean up databases, but it’s critical to generate backups and test the conversion with a small sample before full execution.
An EHR data migration is a great time to establish a healthier vendor relationship, clean up data, and review policies for access, utility, and backups.
Access your Data
At ZH Healthcare, we believe that it should be easy to migrate your data and that you should always have access—no matter what. Explore our EHR, migration solutions like data conversion that puts the ownership and backups in the hands of medical providers and practices. Our services are designed to make data transitions as simple and beneficial as possible for medical practices and professionals.
Contact us today to learn more about how you can take control of your electronic health records.