Posts Tagged: data archiving

What Features Does Your Legacy Archiving System Need?

Posted September 9, 2020 by Beth Osborne & filed under Healthcare, Pharmacy.

To archive or not to archive? That’s not really a question anymore. Archiving a legacy system provides many benefits for healthcare organizations. When selecting a platform, you’ll want to compare features, but what ones are critical for a legacy archiving system? Let’s find out.

Making the Case for Archiving

Just in case you’re on the fence about archiving, here are some more details on how it benefits healthcare.

Streamlining workflows: Using a central repository for old records means there’s one spot to look, not multiple legacy systems.
Meeting medical record retention regulations: You must keep patient records to satisfy requirements. Archiving allows you to do this with fewer challenges.
Saving you money: Legacy systems are expensive to keep running. Archiving platforms are much more cost-effective.
Compliance and security: Older systems that no longer receive updates could be ripe for hacker penetration. Cloud-based archiving solutions are safer and meet HIPAA and HITRUST compliance.

To achieve these advantages, you’ll need to find a legacy archiving system with specific features.

Must-Have Features for Your Legacy Archiving System

Many platforms have the same foundational functionality. However, not all deliver the necessary features. Further, many aren’t healthcare specific, so they may not meet your specifications. When seeking an archiving solution, these are the attributes there are non-negotiable.

Search and filtering: The system should have a robust search and filtering capability so you can find what you need fast.
Audit reporting: You never know when an audit may come your way. If you don’t have reporting abilities, you can spend hours or even days gathering information. Make it easy for your staff with print-ready audit reports.
Encryption: Beyond compliance and basic security, opt for a tool that encrypts data, providing another layer to protect data.
Storage of documents, images, and data: One thing lacking from many systems is the ability to hold images or the inability to transfer certain formats. Images are critical for record retention. Pharmacies often want to archive patient signatures, while hospitals and providers need to store x-rays, scans, or pictures. Make sure that the system you select is compatible with the images you want to archive.
Web-based: When an archive is web-based, users can access it from any device with a password. You aren’t limited to specific machines. If your system doesn’t provide this kind of accessibility, you’ll likely face productivity challenges and delays.
Simplicity: Not all technology has a steep learning curve. You certainly don’t want to deploy a system that requires hours of training and is unnecessarily complex. Choose a system with an intuitive interface, and most people can learn in just a few minutes.
Multiple locations: Pharmacies and healthcare systems often have more than one location. If that’s your situation, you need a tool that can handle this yet still be under the same centralized archive. Otherwise, you’ll have to toggle back and forth.
Permissions: With multi-location scenarios or just in general, you probably need different permissions for different users. For instance, you may limit some users to a specific location, while admins have unfettered access.

Ready to Find the Right Legacy Archiving System?

If you’re ready to ditch legacy systems and archive, we invite you to learn more about our solution—ViewMaster. It’s user-friendly, scalable, affordable, and secure. See how it works by watching our video. Then book a quick demo with our healthcare data management experts!

Health Data Archiving Reduces Costs: Find Out Why

Posted August 31, 2020 by Beth Osborne & filed under Healthcare.

Health data archiving provides many benefits to organizations. It provides a means to retain patient records to meet regulatory requirements. With easy to use archiving tools, you have the access you need without keeping legacy systems up. This move to archive can also deliver positive financial gains, proving it’s also a smart cost-control measure.

KLAS Research Reveals Financial Gains of Archiving

KLAS’ 2019 Legacy Data Archiving Market Review reveals many things about the process. It looked specifically at data archiving platforms and their impact on organizations. One of the most important findings is that 85% of organizations that retire legacy systems and move to archiving report positive financial results.

This finding reaffirms what we’ve been telling healthcare providers, hospitals, and pharmacies for years. Data archiving frees up budget money. Here’s now.

Eliminating Legacy Systems Reduces Costs

Legacy systems have lots of problems from an operational perspective. They are clunky, and it’s hard to find what you need. They may also expose you to more risk if security is no longer updated. Those are all good reasons to decommission, but one that makes an immediate impact is the money you’ll save.

Archiving solutions are much more cost-effective. It’s typically a one-time fee to archive with possible hosting fees, depending on the volume. Keeping your legacy system up is a monthly charge that never goes away until you say goodbye.

Additionally, if you are hosting the data on-site, you are responsible for hardware maintenance and upgrades. These costs are massive and easy to shed. Archiving is a cloud-based solution—no hardware necessary.

Imagine how much savings you’ll gain by decommissioning legacy systems.

Archiving Platforms Improve Productivity

Lost productivity of your staff hurts your bottom line. If they have to spend excessive time hunting down old records for an audit or patient request, they aren’t able to complete their routine tasks. This isn’t a good use of your team’s time. It can add up over the months, affecting productivity across the board.

Migrating Old Data Increases Conversion Fees

Many health organizations migrate to new HIS (health information systems). The more data you take with you, the more data conversion fees you’ll incur. Moving a lot of old data also makes the migration more complex and longer.

Delays like these cost you real money. Instead of converting all your data, archive what you don’t need on a daily basis. Doing so ensures a more seamless experience, as well.

Avoid Compliance Fines with Secure Archiving

As noted earlier, legacy systems can increase the risk of noncompliance. HIPAA fines for data breaches or mishandling PHI (protected health information) aren’t small. They can be as large as $50,000 per violation.

The best way to avoid these is by using a compliant system to archive. The system should comply with HIPAA and HITRUST guidelines, especially surrounding data encryption.

Streamlining Access

Throughout your organization, different users need to access old patient records. How much time does your time waste because access isn’t available? When you can’t locate what you need, workflows suffer, and so could patient care. There are real costs associated with these challenges.

Archiving enables streamlined access. You can even set permissions for users, providing the specific access they need. It’s much easier than users having to physically go to a legacy system and find someone with login credentials.

Health Data Archiving Is a Smart Solution that Saves You Money

Archiving can be a smart move to reduce costs. Our solution, ViewMaster, is affordable, secure, and easy to use. Check out how this web-based platform works today by watching our video.

Converting Data: 6 Things Every Pharmacy Should Know

Posted August 19, 2020 by Beth Osborne & filed under Pharmacy.

At some point, every pharmacy will deal with converting data. You have the choice to move to a new pharmacy software system at any time. You might change for a number of business reasons, or you may face a software sunset. Regardless of why, there are some specific things that every pharmacy should know, and we’re highlighting them here.

Field Inconsistency Is Common

While your new software likely has the same functionality and features of your current one, field inconsistency is common. Every software treats fields differently. The difference may be in what they call the fields or how the system stores the data. One to one matching is possible some of the time. To ensure your fields map correctly, you should:

Choose a data conversion provider that has experience with both systems.
Work with your new software vendor to validate fields.
Determine if coding is different from platform to platform (i.e., allergy codes).

AR Conversions Can Be Tricky

AR (accounts receivable) conversions are not always straightforward. In most cases, it’s a balance only conversion, not transactional. The type of conversion options depends on the system requirements. Different configurations can lead to duplication. Thus, it’s important to understand how your news system holds this data and converse with those converting the data about any concerns.

You Need a 340B Migration Plan

340B prescriptions have a separate inventory database. You’re not paying for the inventory, but you still must track it. Accurately migrating this data is essential to compliance. Plan ahead for 340B data elements to ensure a seamless conversion.

Purge and Archive for a More Seamless Conversion

In most scenarios, there is data in your current software system that doesn’t need to convert. It’s a good idea to look into purging and archiving.

Purging removes unlinked data or inactive elements. A pre-conversion purge of stale data makes the conversion process much smoother.

Data archiving is another solution to limiting what you migrate. You must keep patient records for a certain amount of time to meet regulatory requirements. However, you can choose to archive those you don’t need for daily operations. You still have access to these for audits or patient requests through a secure portal. They don’t have to live in your new system.

Special Considerations for LTC, Specialty Pharmacy, and Hospital Pharmacy

LTC, specialty pharmacy, and hospital pharmacy use software differently than standard retail pharmacies. If you fall into these categories, there are several elements of which to be aware, including:

LTC: Converting data from software not designed for LTC into one that does will need additional validation and possible custom programming.
Specialty: Compounding conversions can be complex. Consult the conversion provider and software vendor to work out any challenges.
Hospital: If you have an in-patient and retail pharmacy and are converting both, you’ll need to determine what data goes where. This is especially true if you are converting multiple systems into one system.

Manual Data Conversions Are Risky

Converting data with a manual approach is inherently risky. Human error is inevitable. It’s also expensive and time-consuming. While there may be fields you need to validate that requires human interaction, it’s way too precarious to use manual practices for a majority of the converting. Programmatic conversions are more accurate, cost-effective, and compliant.

Learn More About Pharmacy Data Conversions

We’ve outlined some of the most essential things that pharmacies should know before they convert. To go in-depth and get more insights, we’ve got a whitepaper just for you. Download The Ultimate Guide to Pharmacy Data Conversions today!