Medsphere

Medsphere Team


EHR/EMR Data Conversions: In-house or Outsource?

April 15, 2021


Data Archival, Data Conversions, MOS 4 Minute Read

If you are an EHR or PM vendor, healthcare IT company or consultant you have helped many practices with EHR/EMR data conversions.

When it comes to these data conversions, there are two choices: perform them in-house, or work with a conversion specialist like Micro-Office Systems.

6 Reasons to Avoid In-House EHR Data Conversions

  1. Not cost-effective. Whatever you think it costs to develop a conversion, there will be many that cost 2-3 times that much. Or worse, in the end, you need to outsource it anyways after a lot of time was already spent on it.
  2. Poor use of expensive resources. Why is your staff spending time on projects that will rarely, if ever, be used again? Instead it’s better to have them spend time on strategic projects.
  3. Resource allocation. Conversions tend to come in waves. So, you  either need to find other work for your conversion specialists to do (and if that happens a lot, then they are not really specialists); or you have a backlog which will impact sales and implementations.
  4. Sales cost-basis. You might make money – or you might lose a lot.
  5. Research intensive. If you are a product vendor, then you are often trying to negotiate with the old vendor, who is a competitor and understandably not willing to draw you a map of their data.
  6. Always custom. The temptation is to justify the effort based on performing more of the same conversion with low costs. But that rarely happens. You may not see that same system for years, and by then it has changed significantly. Variations among practices, even on the same system, can be enormous, based on how they use it.

emr data conversion

8 Red Flags for Outsourced Projects

  1. Completeness. The practice goes live, and then discovers important information is missing. You need to go back to your vendor to find it, and then try to integrate it without duplicating.
  2. Accuracy. Incorrect or incomplete converted data raises liability issues, adversely affects healthcare decisions, and creates extra work for your staff.
  3. Budget. Your vendor quoted you a cost for a certain scope. But you don’t know the old system, and didn’t realize there is important data not included. You then find there is an extra cost for each type.
  4. Security. Healthcare data is coveted by hackers for its identity information. What security process does your outsource vendor use? Do they perform background checks, including FACIS, on all staff who will handle the data? How do they store, transmit and transport the data? Are offshore personnel accessing the data? What are the policies for data retention and disposal?
  5. Timeliness. A lot of planning goes into setting a go-live date: vacations, schedules cleared, travel arrangements, and project stacking. It is essential that the conversion delivery meet the agreed-upon schedule.
  6. Sales Process. If you are a vendor looking to close a sale with a new practice, the conversion is often the last important piece. You need a partner who will provide you predictable pricing and delivery, and who is accessible to get deals done.
  7. Capacity. Having to wait 4-6 months to get a conversion started when you need it started right away.
  8. Coordination. All parties – you, the conversion vendor, and the practice- need to communicate clearly and be actively involved in the conversion, from scope to spec to validation. You need a vendor who provides the experienced project management to work both with your implementation team, and the practice contacts.

EHR Data Conversion 2

What’s the Answer?

The solution is to use the right outsource partner: Micro-Office Systems! We have performed thousands of successful conversions over the last 25 years. We are the partner you can rely on for your clinical, financial and workflow data conversions to be done accurately and on time!

Through our years of experience we have developed a proprietary ConversionMaster engine that accepts the version of the legacy data and readily translates it to the desired format for the new vendor. We can convert both discrete clinical data as well as scanned documents, images, and progress notes for your new vendor.

Want to decommission the old system post-conversion? Select one of our PDF Archive solutions to include an easy-to-use path to lookup patients’ clinical history from any workstation in your network! PDF Archive provides an easy way to legally maintain patient records without keeping old applications or servers under maintenance.

Bring your EHR data conversion to the professionals! View our list of applications that we already know or contact us to discuss other projects.



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