Archiving legacy health data systems is widely seen as a cost-saving measure. In fact, 85% of healthcare organizations that have archived and retired legacy systems report positive financial impacts. And in a highly competitive industry, cutting unnecessary expenses is critical, opening the door for funds to be redirected toward high-quality patient care.

Let’s look at the financial benefits of data archiving and several ways you can ensure you’re not going over budget or wasting valuable resources when undertaking an archiving project.

How Healthcare Data Archiving Solutions Promote Cost Containment

When archiving a healthcare data platform, organizations that partner with the right vendor typically derive savings in the following ways:

Licensing costs.

You no longer need to worry about paying annual or monthly licensing fees for legacy applications.

Maintenance costs.

You don’t have to pay to monitor and update legacy systems that continue to put your organization at an operational disadvantage while simultaneously increasing security risk.

Hardware costs.

Say goodbye to older operating systems tied to physical hardware as you shift new OSes to the cloud.

Productivity.

Costs associated with lost productivity are eliminated, because users can quickly and efficiently access legacy data in a single system. Leaders also no longer need to deal with costly fines incurred when outdated technology prevents the extraction of information in a timely manner for compliance and regulatory needs, like audits, release of information requests, or other information blocking requirements.

Care-related costs.

Maintaining legacy systems jeopardizes patient safety and care quality if critical information is difficult to access, leading to a whole host of other financial implications like malpractice claims, which can be reduced with the help of the right archiving solution.

Security breaches.

By eliminating unsupported technology, you promote healthcare data security and avoid costs associated with security breaches (often $429 per stolen or lost record).

Warning Signs You Might Be Paying Too Much for an Archiving Project

Taking the first step to archive your healthcare data platform is a positive one, but when you don’t choose the vendor and solution that get the job done right, archiving projects can actually increase costs rather than reduce them. This includes costs associated with additional time and materials when archiving projects are delayed. There are four big warning signs you could be overpaying for your current archiving solution:

1. End users are continually dissatisfied because they can’t access critical information in a timely manner.
2. The costs associated with data archiving continue to increase year over year without any additional systems added.
3. You haven’t achieved a financial return on your investment.
4. Your data archiving solution cannot accommodate future strategic goals.

How to Avoid Hidden or Escalating Costs With Data Archiving Solutions

Fortunately, there are ways to avoid overpaying for medical data extraction and contain costs during your partnership with a vendor. Consider these five tips when shifting to a new healthcare data platform.

Tip #1: Be proactive.

Long before you officially start exploring archiving solutions, identify the specific legacy systems you want to archive. Then prioritize those systems based on level of importance, cybersecurity concerns, ongoing maintenance costs, and other factors. While you’re at it, evaluate your organization’s data retention policies and perform ongoing audits to determine what data you access and how often, as well as which data is most important to the organization. Remove all data that you don’t need to archive.

Why this is important:

Being proactive helps ensure your organization sees the maximum benefits from a new healthcare data platform immediately and in the long term. It also prevents you from spending money on archiving systems and data unnecessarily. The right archiving solutions vendor can help you narrow the scope of the data archiving project to determine what specific applications to archive and exactly what it will cost you.

Tip #2: Lean on subject matter experts (SME).

Assemble a small team of SMEs who can assist with medical data extraction out of legacy systems. SMEs can also help validate data in the new healthcare data platform to ensure it’s accurate and easy to read by end users.

Why this is important:

SMEs have in-depth knowledge of the data and can easily identify errors and streamline the entire archiving project, thereby reducing the overall timeline. The longer an archiving project takes, the more money you lose. The goal is to be as efficient as possible without cutting corners.

Tip #3: Distinguish between features that are ‘nice to have’ versus ‘absolutely necessary.’

Data archiving solutions provide a variety of features that your organization may or may not need depending on your strategic goals and challenges. For example, you may not need retention policy functionality. Many organizations also don’t typically need integration between the legacy system and new EHR.

As you make your list of mandatory features, be sure to think about the future. Start to monitor data usage patterns so you can forecast future storage needs. What may not be a “must-have” healthcare data platform feature today could easily become one in the months ahead.

Why this is important:

Figuring out what you want versus what you need prevents you from overspending on features that you won’t use or that you could do without.

Tip #4: Be on the lookout for hidden costs.

Not all costs associated with archiving a healthcare data platform may be apparent at first glance or during initial conversations with archiving solutions vendors. For example, tiered pricing models may look inexpensive; however, once you sign on the dotted line and begin the project, you quickly realize you’re going to end up paying much more than the baseline dollar amount because a dramatic price increase kicks in after you hit a certain threshold of archived records. Archiving projects often end up including more records than you originally anticipated. This leads to unexpected, skyrocketing prices. A better option is a flat fee per archive with a recurring fee to access the archiving software. With this option, there are no surprises. Cost structures are transparent and flexible so minor changes don’t increase your costs.

There are other hidden costs as well. For example, you might pay more to add additional users or access critical features that are otherwise locked behind paywalls.

Why this is important:

Hidden costs are just that—hidden. You don’t expect them, so you’re not prepared for them. The result? They can easily inflate the entire budget and leave you wondering what happened to the cost savings you thought were a selling point of the solution in the first place.

Tip #5: Avoid onsite data storage.

Onsite servers require monetary investment in infrastructure and hardware as well as physical space and a team to maintain it all. Servers may also be susceptible to data loss during disasters. A much safer, more economical choice is cloud storage.

Why this is important:

One of the many goals of data archiving is to reduce costs. This means not relying on onsite servers. Leveraging cloud storage can dramatically decrease overall costs of an archiving project.

A Fast and Cost-Efficient Solution for Healthcare Data Archiving

Time is money, and this couldn’t be truer when it comes to data archiving projects. While some data archiving solutions vendors can only address five legacy systems per year, others take a more modernized approach to tackle dozens of systems at once, often performing at much higher speeds and decreasing validation time.

However, there are so many other factors that affect cost as well. When done well, healthcare data archiving projects should reduce overall costs—not increase them. Contact us today to learn more about Olah™, Verisma’s simple, fast, and complete enterprise archiving solution.

Having the right team in place can make or break any healthcare document management project. This is especially true when migrating legacy data to a new platform. It’s a substantial undertaking with little room for error. Healthcare organizations need leaders and staff who can manage the entire process — from vendor engagement to project completion — on time and within budget.

When done correctly, a modernized approach to managing legacy data empowers clinicians and staff, reduces costs and security vulnerabilities, and promotes high-quality patient care. In fact, novel approaches to healthcare document management streamline these projects exponentially — and, as a result, support clinicians in providing holistic, effective care.

The time to form a skilled team charged with legacy data migration is long before the archiving project begins. In fact, several members of the team should already be in place as the organization embarks on its journey to evaluate data archiving solutions.

Planning ahead helps avoid unexpected problems such as hardware failure in your legacy system or a security breach that can lead to critical data loss, patient safety concerns, and other risks. Even if the project isn’t something on the immediate horizon, creating the team in advance helps organizations mitigate problems and ensure successful project execution.

Who Should Be a Part of the Archived Records Team?

One of the most important members of the team is an executive sponsor. This individual — typically a senior management professional involved in every step of the healthcare document management project — understands and speaks clearly to both the reasons why data needs to be archived and the challenges that staff, clinicians, and patients currently face. They secure funding for the project and reiterate the importance of the archived records in delivering high-quality, timely, and safe patient care. Unresolved issues are typically escalated to executive sponsors — meaning they play a vital role in addressing barriers and overcoming challenges as they occur.

Equally important is a project manager who sets realistic timelines and expectations, coordinates between many different subject matter experts, identifies project goals, and establishes stakeholder roles and responsibilities. This individual, who usually joins the data archiving team right after the organization signs a vendor contract, is responsible for holding everyone accountable and keeping the entire legacy data project on schedule. They also identify and manage potential risks including data loss, system disruptions, and unforeseen challenges, and ensure compliance with company data policies, legal requirements, and industry regulations.

In addition, organizations should involve a network administrator to provide necessary network access, data extraction, and other technical expertise. The network administrator typically participates in initial vendor product demonstrations and provides some of the key information vendors need (e.g., database sizes and database types to archive) to ensure accurate price quotes. Because the speed of data extraction dictates timelines, it’s critical to involve this person early and often to meet stakeholder expectations.

The healthcare document management team should also include an application administrator. They provide input regarding application configuration to ensure the vendor’s platform will meet the organization’s needs, such as whether the solution allows for simple and efficient data retrieval. They also review service-level agreements, evaluate the performance capabilities and scalability of the platform, ensure the vendor has a solid archiving plan that protects data integrity and accuracy, and check compliance and security measures.

The archived records team should also include various business leads, including a superuser to whom others can turn to when questions about handling legacy data arise. In addition, the team should include clinical subject matter experts. The best practice is to provide these individuals with single sign-on integration from the main electronic medical record (EMR) so they can validate workflows and ensure the legacy data transfers seamlessly. Clinical subject matter experts can also evaluate the user interface to make sure it’s intuitive for care teams.

Who Is Typically on the Vendor’s Healthcare Document Management Team?

The data archiving vendor’s team usually includes a project manager, consultants with strong clinical and implementation backgrounds, technical experts to extract legacy data and focus on archive environment setup and teardown, data modelers to migrate the data into the new system, and auditors to validate results and report exceptions. This team works side by side with the hospital to follow the project plan.

What Role Does the Archived Records Team Play in the Overall Project?

The team is only one piece of the puzzle, albeit an important one. It’s how these individuals work together to complete critical steps that matters most. More specifically, the team accomplishes these important tasks:

1. Aligns legacy data projects with strategic goals.

The archived records team looks ahead to ensure the organization’s healthcare document management strategy helps simplify the EMR portfolio and plans for system transitions during mergers and acquisitions. It’s all about prioritizing projects to maximize limited resources.

2. Answers important questions.

Who will manage legacy data? How long will the organization retain it? The team organizes and maintains this information in a formal archive policy.

3. Creates a plan to migrate legacy data.

What specific data will the organization migrate (and retain) based on state and facility-specific requirements and other factors? The team sorts this out. For example, healthcare organizations may eventually need to securely delete legacy data from storage systems or securely discard physical records.

4. Understands and prioritizes end user needs.

The team ensures end users — particularly clinicians and health information staff — ultimately have access to legacy data when they need it most. The team understands workflows, anticipates barriers, and proactively mitigates risk.

5. Vets potential vendors to find the most cost-effective, collaborative partner.

The team ensures any vendor’s proposal includes the full scope of work and clearly defined deliverables.

What Is the Biggest Challenge in Building an Archived Records Team?

Given today’s healthcare staffing shortages, the biggest challenge in establishing a strong team is identifying internal resources for the job. IT staff, for example, are likely pulled in many directions. The same is true for clinicians. Though larger organizations may have more operational flexibility, smaller, rural hospitals may lack the necessary internal expertise to successfully manage legacy data.

The good news is that organizations may not even need a full-time team if they partner with the right vendor that can guide staff through the process — such as one that leverages a streamlined, non-ETL approach to give organizations the ability to move legacy data without the burden of hiring new workers. In an era of healthcare staff burnout, a non-ETL approach reduces the overhead burden, allowing staff to focus on what matters most: high-quality patient care.

When It Comes to Archiving, Don’t Go It Alone

Having the right team in place to focus on archiving legacy data can make or break the entire effort. Equally as important: a product that makes everyone’s jobs easier. Learn about Verisma’s simple, fast, and complete solution for archiving medical records, Olah™, at https://verisma.com/our-solutions/data-archiving/.

If there’s anything you can usually count on in cybersecurity circles, it’s annual reports about healthcare data breaches happening more frequently and increasing in severity. That’s why mixed news about healthcare data security after the first half of 2023 showed a refreshing glimmer of hope. Although reported breaches were larger in scope, the total projected number of healthcare breaches for the year was the lowest since 2019. 

But what a difference one quarter makes. 

Breaches in 2023 are now expected to double last year’s total. Almost 89 million people in the U.S. were impacted by healthcare data breaches through mid-October, an increase from 43.5 million at the same point in 2022. 

The possibility of experiencing a breach is an omnipresent threat for both healthcare organizations and patients, and lack of preparedness on the part of the former is a liability in today’s digital- and data-driven world. Healthcare leaders cannot assume their organization’s data is safe. It’s not. This is especially true for data residing in legacy systems. 

The age of legacy systems is a threat to healthcare cyber security 

Legacy technology (e.g., devices, hardware, applications, and operating systems) represents the third-biggest security challenge for healthcare cyber security programs. Legacy software in particular is the initial point of compromise 15% of the time.  

Why do legacy systems and technologies pose such a significant threat?  

Because they’re old, obsolete, and outdated. Too often, healthcare leaders and staff become dependent on operating systems that aren’t updated in a timely fashion. But manufacturers don’t often support legacy technology, meaning healthcare data security patches and other upgrades simply aren’t available. This can happen with legacy medical devices, electronic health records, apps, enterprise resource management solutions, and much more. Without these critical upgrades and patches, organizations that continue to use these systems and technologies become extremely vulnerable to data breaches. Attackers can easily exploit vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access.  

Another reason legacy systems and technologies pose a challenge? They may have outdated or old open-source code, making it difficult for IT staff trained in newer technologies to identify and address vulnerabilities to promote data security. 

Organizations need solutions to keep up with new features & compliance.

The barriers that legacy technologies pose to effective data management in healthcare unfortunately don’t stop there. Legacy systems weren’t developed with healthcare cyber security and the latest threats in mind, thus they’re not usually compatible with newer security features. And there are many new, critical tools that are essential to a top-notch security operation, including: 

• Advanced encryption, or using multiple rounds of encryption on smaller blocks of information to provide added security 
• 24/7 system monitoring, or the ability of real-time monitoring to swiftly identify and contain threats around the clock 
• Role-based access, or the ability to give users access to different parts of the network based on their assigned roles 
• Single sign-on, a centralized approach to authentication and authorization that reduces the number of necessary passwords and thus the likelihood of weak passwords 
• Multi-factor authentication, or the ability to grant access after a user presents two or more pieces of evidence to confirm their identity 

In addition, legacy systems may not comply with current regulations for protecting patient data, like creating advanced audit trails and reports. Or in some cases, audit trails and logs could be in a proprietary format that no one can access or analyze. These assets could otherwise provide valuable insights that organizations can use to promote healthcare cyber security. This inability to monitor actions is particularly problematic when legacy systems and technologies are connected to the internet as well as an internal corporate network. If a hacker exploits a legacy system or technology without triggering any alerts or logs, they can access valuable data – and potentially remain undetected for lengthy periods of time.  

How archiving mitigates risk & improves data management in healthcare 

Here’s the bottom line: Legacy systems continue to pose a threat even despite an organization’s best efforts to promote healthcare cyber security. In a recent cybersecurity newsletter, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reminds healthcare providers of the importance of maintaining healthcare data security—particularly around managing the security risk of legacy systems.  

The good news? There is an effective strategy to mitigate security risk: healthcare data archiving. Here are four ways in which data management in healthcare benefits from archiving: 

1. Data is stored securely in a safe cloud-based location with better access controls to protect against data breaches.
2. Archiving contributes to a strong data governance strategy that helps providers meet compliance and regulatory standards while simultaneously promoting business continuity.
3. Archiving facilitates data migration onto more secure systems, helping healthcare providers preserve and protect sensitive data in the long run.
4. Archiving data to a cloud-based solution reducesthe overall surface of attack and exposure, allowing cyber security resources to be re-deployed elsewhere. This is particularly beneficial from a financial perspective. According to the 2022 HIMSS Healthcare Cybersecurity Survey, budget is the second-highest barrier to robust cyber security (behind inadequate cyber security staff), cited by 50% of respondents. 

 During a time when healthcare cyber security continues to evolve, why increase risk by continuing to rely on legacy systems and technologies? It’s completely unnecessary. The disadvantages of using those antiquated systems far outweigh any perceived advantages. Instead, it’s time to let go of old technology and embrace innovative solutions that promote healthcare data security. Archiving is the answer. Contact Verisma today to learn how we can help.