For healthcare providers, achieving 2025’s top IT priorities — strengthening cybersecurity, optimizing clinical workflows, and improving interoperability — is easier said than done. According to the 2024 Healthcare Payer & Provider IT Trends and Priorities report, developed by KLAS Research and Bain & Company, these goals remain paramount for healthcare organizations, but they’re often thwarted by electronic health record (EHR) system transitions.

Migrating from one EHR system to another is a high-stakes process. Patient records that arrive in the new system with inconsistencies — or worse, don’t arrive at all — force clinicians to manually track down information during appointments. This problem slows care and increases the risk of errors. Poorly managed transitions also create compliance gaps and data security vulnerabilities, the very issues providers hope an EHR upgrade will resolve.

Medical data abstraction offers a way to streamline and secure the conversion of patient records during the EHR migration process. Conducted by a trusted partner, abstraction enables healthcare organizations to:

• Move patient records cleanly and consistently from legacy EHRs
• Improve data accuracy and workflow
• Enhance information security and compliance

By maintaining data integrity and bolstering workflow efficiency, healthcare organizations give themselves a strong opportunity to meet the high-priority goals that shape their business.

The Hidden Risks of EHR Transitions

Legacy systems often store data in inconsistent formats, proprietary databases, or incomplete archives. The integrity issues that occur as a result can stall EHR migrations and bury IT teams in manual work — with critical details like lab results, imaging reports, and provider notes ending up misaligned or lost entirely.

These gaps ripple across clinical workflows. Clinicians waste patient-facing time chasing missing records, increasing burnout risk. Incomplete or corrupted data can also lead to serious errors in patient care.

Data issues also create security gaps. Temporary workarounds like shared access to paper records or unsecured file transfers often introduce vulnerabilities that undermine cybersecurity and compliance.

Finally, without proper abstraction, interoperability suffers. Data silos form when information is left behind or converted into incompatible formats, limiting the ability to exchange information with other EHRs, analytics tools, or telehealth platforms. Put together, these challenges show how seemingly straightforward migrations can quickly turn into costly, complex quagmires.

Medical Data Abstraction, Defined

Abstraction is the process of converting patient records from legacy EHR systems into structured, standardized formats that integrate seamlessly with new platforms. Done right, it prioritizes accuracy, usability, and completeness.

With an expert partner overseeing abstraction, providers can ensure patient records are consistently clean and actionable. Clinicians get the information they need without delay. IT teams avoid downstream issues. And the organization moves closer to achieving the business goals that drove the EHR upgrade in the first place.

Supporting Workflow Optimization

By converting records into structured, standardized formats, abstraction ensures clinicians can access complete patient histories quickly and confidently, with no need to second-guess what information will actually be there.

Organized, accurate data allows providers to spend less time reconciling inconsistencies or searching for information that got lost in translation. In high-volume care environments and other instances where every minute matters, per-patient savings can result in hours back at the end of the day.

Properly managed abstraction also gives clinicians the information they need at the point of care — enabling faster decisions and improving the entire patient experience.

Enabling Interoperability

Standardized patient data in a new EHR system flows seamlessly across platforms, applications, and care settings. It allows for the smooth integration of the new EHR with analytics platforms, telehealth tools, population health initiatives, and other critical systems.

The result is a more connected, data-driven healthcare ecosystem. Providers gain a unified view of patient information, IT teams avoid costly integration challenges, and organizations are better positioned to support emerging digital health strategies.

Enhancing Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is always a top focus for healthcare’s high-level business and IT stakeholders, and the 2024 Healthcare Payer & Provider IT Trends and Priorities report indicates many providers are doubling down on their efforts. During EHR transitions, accurate medical data abstraction helps protect sensitive patient information by reducing errors, maintaining strict data controls, and preventing risky workarounds.

By ensuring data is handled, mapped, and migrated securely, abstraction keeps organizations aligned with compliance standards. In this way, it directly supports both clinical operations and broader IT security goals.

See a Successful EHR Migration With Proper Data Abstraction

From a future-proofed EHR upgrade to stronger cybersecurity, the reasons abound to take medical data abstraction seriously. Healthcare organizations often feel they can perform this process using in-house staff, but doing so frequently results in overwhelm, burnout, budget blowout, and a bottlenecked migration. That’s where GuideIT lends our expertise.

We have 30+ years’ experience helping healthcare organizations abstract data and successfully move EHR systems. Every member of our abstraction team has a medical background. We help your staff establish timelines, ensure data quality/integrity, and stick to a budget that makes sense for your organization — ensuring you hit the ground running with a fine-tuned, highly consistent EHR. Reach out today for a free assessment of your data environment and custom advice on how
to proceed with your migration.