The Problem with Moving EHR Systems Internally

When it’s time to move your healthcare organization to a modern electronic health record (EHR) system like Epic, you’re suddenly tasked with converting all your clinical data to the new platform with speed, security, and continuity. This project — known as medical data abstraction — may seem straightforward enough, but it often causes several problems for healthcare organizations that attempt to do it internally:

• Paying employees overtime to convert records results in high costs and employee burn-out.
• If you don’t have abstraction experts on hand, you may fail to migrate data properly — resulting in poor patient and provider experiences.
• Without proper planning, oversight, and quality control, you run the risk of non-compliance and security vulnerabilities.

Who Needs to Be on Your Abstraction Team

Gather your resources to form an expert roster that will get the job done on time and with compliance. You will need:

• A project lead
• Abstractors
• Quality assurance staff
• Reporting staff

How to Map out Your Timeline and Budget

Consider factors such as the capacity of your team, what type of patient data you’re moving, when you need to have the right data in the system, and more.

What’s Involved in Evaluating Your Data

You shouldn’t move every piece of data from the legacy system to the new one. Task your team with evaluating the most valuable information that should be in your new EHR system at the time your providers need it. If you don’t have experienced abstractors on staff, it’s critical to have an abstraction partner perform this step so you don’t miss data or blow out your budget data you don’t need. Your partner will also tell you what can be moved electronically and what should be moved manually.

How to Locate and Standardize Your Data

This step is especially important for multi-location healthcare organizations because multiple providers record notes in multiple locations across multiple facilities in different ways.

What Quality Assurance Staff Should Do

QA should be rigorous and corrective so you know the right patient records reach the new system with data integrity. An abstraction partner will do this and more — training your team members and using tools to identify repeat issues.

The Importance of Reporting

You’ll need to implement a reporting cadence to see progress, ensure you’re sticking to budget, and stay aligned with your scope. You’ll also need specific reporting to stay HIPAA-compliant and in line with state and federal regulations.

The ultimate goal of any medical data abstraction project is to ensure that the right patient records are ready and accessible in your new EHR system before a patient’s next visit. Download the eBook to get an in-depth, step-by-step guide for your abstraction project.

If you have questions about moving to Epic or a new EHR system, get in touch with an abstraction expert at GuideIT.

Our abstraction team is 100% staff with medical backgrounds and healthcare experience, and we convert your data cleanly, efficiently, on time, and within budget.

Schedule a Free Consultation