Your Challenges

EHR adoption in ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) has been on a rise after the implementation of the HITECH Act (2009). However, a few of the ASCs still lag in such adoption, especially the smaller organizations, which has in turn negatively affected the patient care of ambulatory patients in outpatient settings.

One of the major reasons for such a slow adoption is staff resistance. The ambulatory surgery centers staff feel that the EHR increases the workload as it is too complex, and does not have the necessary functionality needed for operation and an optimal workflow. This has led the staff to store data both manually and digitally with some of the data on paper and the rest in EHRs.

Such retention practices are causing incorrect and inconsistent storage of data and creating challenges such as duplicate entry, double documentation, scanning and transportation of documents, and reliance on patient or clinician recall for inaccessible EHR information.

Despite such challenges, most ambulatory surgery centers have multiple legacy systems across departments and sites with large amounts and types of patient information to meet statutory retention requirements. However, due to the lack of interoperability between the EHRs, the ambulatory center staff may find themselves confronted with challenges such as:

  • Searching records in various historical systems.
  • Remembering the passwords and menu configuration for multiple systems.
  • Accessing and processing the data while maintaining the current operational data in the new systems.

These challenges contribute to physician burnout, which may cause negative consequences for patient care, and destruct operational workflows.

Even if the ASC decides to address such challenges by converting and migrating their historical records into the new system, the go-forward system might not be completely compatible with the data format of the data in legacy systems. This could require the retention of some of the legacy systems with incompatible data at additional costs. Such is not feasible for an ASC as they are smaller centers that constantly face financial challenges and run on smaller budgets.

Also, the ambulatory surgery center must ensure that its healthcare data is retained in compliance with HIPAA and other legal requirements.

  • Federal laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) require that any records associated with HIPAA be retained for a minimum of six years starting from when the HIPAA-compliant policies were first implemented.
  • The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services cites 42 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) to establish the minimum of a 7-year retention period for medical records following the Date of Service (DoS).
  • Each state in the US also has its own set of retention laws to be followed by healthcare facilities. Such state laws usually mandate that legacy data be retained between the duration of five to twenty-five or more years, depending on the state the organization is in, and the patient’s age.

 

Our Solution

Triyam helps ambulatory surgery centers extract, convert, and migrate some data to the new EHR or archive their legacy data from multiple systems to the new system or to Triyam’s recommended archival solution, ‘Fovea EHR Archive ®.’ If the historic data is archived to Fovea, the archive can be integrated with the new system for quick access to both historical and operational data that can be provided for future information requests.

Fovea can be the one-stop solution for all the problems faced by the ambulatory surgery center.

  • Data from multiple systems can be archived into Fovea, thus providing a single unified platform and excellent interoperability for accessing historical data.
  • As our solution is vendor-agnostic, any type of data can be archived in it. This eliminates the maintenance of legacy systems, which can then be decommissioned, resulting in significant cost savings for the ambulatory surgery center.
  • Archive paper records by converting them to scanned documents and images.
  • The SaaS model supports creating statistical reports, dashboards, and graphical analysis tools, with the ability to drill down into the data. This feature would help clinicians improve population and public health through more advanced reporting and disease surveillance. Such cannot be achieved using paper patient charts.
  • Financial balances can be kept track of and managed in Fovea by actions such as winding down AR, posting payments, editing, and reprinting claims for resubmission, bulk upload collections and remittances, printing patient statements, etc
  • Fovea is HIPAA-compliant and SOC2-certified, and helps retain data as per statutory retention requirements.
  • This will ensure patient data safety and the delivery of high-quality care.
  • Fovea has extensive capability to connect to external systems via API interfaces; whether it is connecting to the new EHR/ERP or for Single Sign-On.

The Single Sign-On (SSO) feature in Fovea can help staff reduce time on their EHRs, as the functionality provides them with the ability to acquire historical data from multiple systems instantly by simply logging into Fovea from their current EHR. This makes a very easy Release of Information and downloading workflow for the users. Thus, through SSO, the staff can save time searching through multiple EHRs and enjoy seamless interoperability between the go-forward EHR, Fovea, and the legacy systems. This would also help automate and streamline provider workflow, thereby improving patient continuity of care.

As Fovea is a cloud-based solution, it allows ambulatory surgery centers to securely access data anytime and anywhere on a PC, iPad, or mobile device and share information with other healthcare providers, patients, insurance companies, regulators, and auditors as needed.

Related: About Fovea EHR Archive

How Triyam helps Ambulatory Surgery Centers

Triyam has provided such data management solutions for various ambulatory surgery centers. Choosing Triyam’s team of experts as your partner provides the extensive experience needed to help your organization meet its data management requirements.

Our team performs data extraction, conversion, migration and archival, based on retention guidelines and organizational needs, with collaboration with the facility at every step of the project. We ensure that our customer’s data is managed in a way that would provide their facility with a higher return on investment, improve their workflow, and help them manage their data in the long run with an optimal data management strategy.

Interested in Triyam’s data management solution for your ambulatory surgery center?

Reach out to our team at Info@triyam.com or give us a call at 855-663-2684.