By Josh Dunaway | Jan 9, 2021
Healthcare provider organizations that have yet to plan a legacy data management strategy are missing key opportunities to address the new wave of cost pressures, merger and acquisition activity, and transformation initiatives coming into our industry.
KLAS Research reported that 85% of healthcare organizations choosing to retire systems and archive their data found positive financial impacts of doing so. The costs tied up in maintaining legacy systems make it easy to justify a legacy data project. But the complexity of health IT environments, the number of disparate systems, and heavy lifting associated with data extraction and mapping make these initiatives easier said than done. And here is where we miss the longer-term opportunities such as archiving data in a way that is pertinent to AI algorithms or how data access plays into interoperability.
The Pitfalls of Legacy System Archiving
Whether a single site healthcare provider or multi-faceted health system, there are common pitfalls in archiving a legacy system. These include:
Defining Legacy Data Requirements – Questions to Ask
Developing a legacy data strategy asks and answers relevant questions around your requirements so that your organization can move forward effectively and determine the return on investment. These questions are designed to help you avoid the common pitfalls I’ve mentioned:
Do you have legacy data opportunities, and how might you address them?What does success look like?
The best strategies target legacy applications, prioritizing them for decommissioning based on a calculation of risk and the cost to do so. The organizations we’ve seen achieve the most success addressing legacy data recognize the liability of storing patient data that isn’t required or clinically useful, as well as the need to get ahead of end-of-life infrastructure. Determining what must be archived/retained versus archiving everything often presents a cost-saving as well as a risk management tactic. With an active strategy effort, implementation of a go-forward archive solution becomes easier, less expensive, and time-consuming, and therefore returns a faster ROI, ideally in 6-9 months.
Bottom line, Health IT leaders must choose a legacy data archive solution that is cost-effective, industry-standard based, works with your data sets, and helps you move into the future efficiently. There are many solutions and approaches in the market for legacy data archiving and well-defined requirements can help you choose the right approach for your organization.
Assistant Vice President, Data Solutions, CereCore
Assistant Vice President, Data Solutions, CereCore
Oklahoma Heart Hospital and CereCore collaborated to ready 128 interfaces during their transition from Cerner Millennium to Epic.
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