As technology evolves, IT Directors replace old technology with new. Due to cost and complexity, complete clinical data conversions from the old system to the new are atypical. This can result in a portfolio of read-only systems that carry (more…)

As technology evolves, IT Directors replace old technology with new. Due to cost and complexity, complete EMR conversion from the old system to the new are atypical. This can result in a portfolio of read-only systems that carry

• a hefty maintenance price tag
• an IT labor burden
• long-term user training issues
• technical risk as servers age

Indiana University Health changed all that by implementing Health Data Archiver.

Tara Williams, MSN, RN Director Inforamtion Services Indiana University Health Bedford Hospital “We needed to comply with medical record retention requirements,” says Tara Williams, MSN, RN and Director of Information Systems at Indiana University Health Bedford Hospital, “but, we knew that our costs would be cut significantly if we archived versus keeping inactive systems up and running long-term.”

When evaluating medical data storage solutions, Tara and her team sought a healthcare data storage vendor who could consolidate the data from disparate legacy systems into a single relational database. They wanted a system that would be both easy to use and to maintain for decades to come.

“When it came right down to it,” Tara says, “the simplicity of Health Data Archiver was what won us over. Honestly, I think my kids could teach you how to use this product.”

Health Data Archiver is an easy-to-use, vendor-neutral repository that helps reduce the costs of legacy system maintenance and bypass the complexity of conversions. Unlike active archives that re-create a medical billing system, Health Data Archiver is an intuitive static archive requiring little to no training.

“Our analysis shows an 18-month return on investment,” says Tara. “To eliminate the support costs, license fees and IT administration burden of multiple legacy systems over time is a no-brainer.”

IU Health Bedord Hospital is a critical access facility located in Bedford, IN. To start, they have arranged for Harmony Healthcare IT to archive three legacy systems into a single repository. The solution will scale over time as additional protected health information is secured for long-term healthcare data storage.

Harmony Healthcare IT (HHIT) is the developer and service provider for Health Data Archiver, a long-term medical data storage solution for protected health information. Health Data Archiver allows both ambulatory and acute healthcare organizations to comply with state medical record retention mandates. In addition to medical data archiving, HHIT also performs clinical and financial data extractions, migrations, conversions, integrations, exchanges and analytics.

A recently published report from IDC Health Insights cites that nearly 60% of the 212 PCP and specialist providers surveyed are very dissatisfied, dissatisfied, or neutral about their ambulatory EHRs. The primary reason for the dissatisfaction across the over 25 different EHR products used was loss of productivity. (more…)

Physician Turnover Rates At An All-Time High

According to findings released 3/18/13 from the 8th annual Physician Retention Survey from Cejka Search and the American Medical Group Association (AMGA), physician turnover rates are at an all-time high.  As physicians depart or retire from a practice, the need to archive electronic protected health information (ePHI) of patients rises. (more…)