What Is Data Archiving?

Pharmacy and healthcare organizations are responsible for a tremendous amount of data. From patient history to prescription records, the data you collect and store is critical to your operations. But what happens during a data conversion when you don’t want to move all your records? You still need access to the data for compliance and regulatory reasons. An alternative and less expensive option is to archive it. So, what is data archiving?

Data Archiving Explained

Data archiving is the process of identifying and moving data from your current pharmacy software or EHR platform to long-term storage. The storage and transfer of this data must be secure. That’s because it’s protected health information (PHI), meaning HIPAA governs its usage.

Keeping Legacy Systems Running is Risky and Costly

When you move to a new system, not everything has to go with you. Converting more data will typically cost more money. The other option is to keep your legacy system running, which means a monthly maintenance fee. Plus, your old system may be no longer supported. When software is no longer updated, it becomes more susceptible to a breach.

Legacy systems also make it harder for you to find what you need. If you become the subject of an audit, you’ll be expected to deliver a report with documentation quickly. That can be difficult with old platforms.
Data archiving, however, offers you many advantages over legacy systems.

Why Archiving Is a Better Alternative

Archiving offers you more freedom for less. It’s a better option than converting all your data to a new system or maintaining old software. You can easily archive multiple years of data, which you must keep to be compliant with HIPAA and Medicare Part D. And you only pay an initial fee—no monthly charges required!

As a leader in pharmacy and healthcare data management, we designed a transaction viewing tool to enable easy data archiving, ViewMaster. This web-based, intuitive user interface is accessible as long as you have an internet connection. It offers a central, searchable archive that’s encrypted and secure. The security of the data meets HIPAA and HITRUST guidelines.

You can also store multiple formats of data, including images and documents. For example, pharmacies find this tool useful because it stores patient signature acknowledgments. So, if you become the subject of an audit, you can quickly create print-ready supports of this documentation.

This activity would take hours, if not days, to complete if you’re working from a legacy system. You and your staff don’t have that kind of time. ViewMaster delivers a convenience not found with any other type of archiving platform.

It’s also highly configurable. If you have multiple locations, you can limit or expand user permissions, depending on the access needed by each person. And, because it’s so easy to use, it requires only a few minutes of training.

We’ve archived billions of records for pharmacies and healthcare systems. See how ViewMaster works today by scheduling a demo with our team.