Many of you may have already heard of (or unfortunately experienced first hand) the sticker shock when you implement a new EHR. Unfortunately the bad news does not stop with just setting up the new system. Once the new EHR is implemented, try asking the vendor to share their data with your other systems like PACS, Lab, Health Information Exchange etc. The EHR vendor will ask you to pay thousands of dollars more for each data exchange. Arthur Allen, editor of eHealth at Politico recently reported that 'The vendors of the health care software want thousands of dollars to unlock the data so they can be shared' (Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/data-fees-health-care-reform-115402)
The same is the case for converting your historical medical and financial records too - here's how. The squeaky-clean new EHR system does not have all the historical medical records present in the old EHR. You may vividly recollect the sales guy of the new EHR telling you that 'we will migrate all your data to the new system'. Try calling him about that promise, after you made the purchase. He or she would 'clarify' that what he really meant was the patient demographics and not all medical records like allergies, orders, medications etc,; not even all the financials like charges, claims, statements etc. When you tell him that the state requires your facility to maintain at least 5 years of history; the sales guy would tell you that they would be happy to do the entire conversion for a additional price. (See how many years of data your state mandates to maintain here https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/appa7-1.pdf ) You bite the bullet and get management approval for this additional cost.
You would think you have heard the last of all price tags, wait till the data conversion project gets kicked off. The legacy EHR vendor whose system you just replaced, sees one last opportunity to give you a departing blow. This outgoing vendor wants you to pay up for releasing the historical data stored in their application. 'But the data belongs to the facility' you would argue....good luck with that.
This is what we at Triyam call the 'two sides of historical data conversion'. At Triyam, we can extract your historical data from the legacy EHR system without any help from the EHR vendor. The extracted data can be migrated to the new EHR or can be simply archived into Triyam's own archival software Fovea. The facility need not pay two vendors for this conversion and once archived, the facility can stop paying the old EHR vendor for annual support and shut down their system for good. Contact us to learn more.

If you are a healthcare provider, it is important to realize that you own the patient data. Of course the patient has ownership to their own data too. But as a provider you have the extra burden of keeping your patients data secure, and retaining the history for five years or more.

Typically if you own something, you would expect that you can take it with you wherever you go. But research has shown that this is becoming increasingly difficult with EHR data - especially when you decide to change your EHR vendor. Each EHR software has a proprietary program running it; simply taking a database backup is of no use because the proprietary data can never be extracted from these backups. To top it off, now a days many EHRs are hosted in the cloud. Any dispute between the provider and the EHR vendor - even a simple delay in payment of one month’s subscription - has the risk of the EHR vendor locking out the provider from their own patient data.

During EHR implementation, make sure you are planning for data conversion; read more about this topic here (Data Conversion During an EHR Implementation)

There are many hospitals who move to new EHR system but continue to pay annual support to the old EHR vendor because they cannot transfer all the medical records data out of it.
When replacing EHR, hospitals and providers are many times led to the false belief that they will not need the old system once they move to the new one. Many states require a minimum of five years of historical data retention.

Triyam specializes in converting ALL data from old EHR to new EHR and archiving records for compliance.
Visit our website to learn about converting ALL your historical medical records from the old EHR to the new EHR or archiving it. We can keep you compliant, and also save thousands of dollars.

20% of hospitals changed their EHR in the last 12 months. When a healthcare facility changes EHR, there are many dimensions to the project, data conversion is one of them.  Data conversion strategies start with defining the data retention policy, understanding data migration scope and extracting historical medical and financial records from legacy EHR and moving it to new EHR or archiving them.

Contact us today to share important tips on Data management strategies for EHR system replacement.

When writing the Medical records retention policy in a hospital, the management team should consider state mandated requirements. Many states require a minimum of five years of data retention; this varies from state to state. For minors the policy may mandate more years of data retention. As long as all historical data is in one system, there is no problem. But now a days many hospitals change their EMR / EHR vendors. When that happens, the CIO should remember to move at least five years of historical records to the new EMR. Another alternative is to archive these historical records in a secure portal.
Learn more about data retention policies and managing EHR/EMR changes, contact us today

Changing EMR system in a hospital or clinic is not an easy undertaking. It needs coordinated effort from various players. Many times the tasks for bringing up the new system are so overwhelming that many forget to plan for proper phase out of the outgoing EMR. Contact us today to know how this transition could be managed.

When you are replacing your EMR vendor, you need to know that not all data gets converted into your new system. Hospitals and providers are many times lead to the false belief that they will not need the old system once they move to the new one. Contact us to learn about the ownership of patient data, compliance requirements and the hidden costs in EMR data conversion.