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ADVICE FOR HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS SEEKING TO
CENTRALIZE PATIENT RECORDS, DECOMMISSION LEGACY SYSTEMS
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ADVICE FOR HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS SEEKING TO
CENTRALIZE PATIENT RECORDS, DECOMMISSION LEGACY SYSTEMS
W
ith patient information still existing on multiple systems, and even on paper, experts are
urging healthcare organizations to find new solutions to the problem of fragmented patient
records. Doing so, they say, will improve patient safety and quality, head off compliance
issues and reduce costs.
Despite the advent of the electronic medical record (EMR), clinical and non-clinical staff in most
organizations continue to struggle with scattered patient data stored across legacy platforms.
Depending on which patient data they need to access, this requires staff to log onto multiple systems,
creating not only inefficiencies, but also a risk to quality of care.
“CIOs, CTOs, master data managers and compliance personnel should take every opportunity to
reduce the amount of legacy data they maintain,” says Barry Runyon, vice president of research
at Gartner, a Stamford, Connecticut-based consulting and services firm. “Legacy data that can be
legitimately removed should be during decommissioning. Data that no longer has immediate value
to the enterprise … contributes to unnecessary storage growth, storage-related spending and
e-discovery risks.”
November 2014
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ADVICE FOR HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS SEEKING TO
CENTRALIZE PATIENT RECORDS, DECOMMISSION LEGACY SYSTEMS
Reducing the amount of legacy data and merging
all patient information into one centralized system
will also improve quality of care and enhance
clinician productivity.
Retaining legacy applications is also expensive, since
it requires servers, storage and software licenses,
ongoing additional administration and continuous
upgrades. Since more data increases load on existing
production systems, having legacy data spread
out in multiple locations can also compromise
application performance.
LEGACY SYSTEMS RISK HIPAA
COMPLIANCE FOR ORGANIZATIONS
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• Give staff a centralized way to manage patient
data, which will reduce work, chaos and confusion.
• Protect an organization’s reputation for patient
safety and quality by giving staff access to lifetime
patient information.
• Centralize a solution that eliminates risk when
it comes to information security compliance,
including HIPAA.
• Give your organization a technology solution that
provides for cost management on both the front
and back ends.
Patient records must be retained long-term, not
only for the purposes of safety and better quality
of care, but for compliance with the information
security requirements of the Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
“CIOs, CTOs, master data managers
and compliance personnel should
take every opportunity to reduce the
amount of legacy data they maintain.”
Barry Runyon, vice president of research at Gartner
For organizations to remain in compliance with
HIPAA, records must be immutable and tamperproof to a prevent data from being altered or
deleted. Under HIPAA, data must be secure and
private and auditors must be able to trace user
access to patient records. Keeping older information
in production and legacy applications is not
compliant, cost-effective or scalable.
Runyon and other experts say that healthcare
organizations should solve this patient information
and archiving dilemma by seeking new technologies
that will accomplish the following:
November 2014
You should “investigate legacy decommissioning
and data vendors. These providers offer a variety of
approaches—from hosting parts of or entire retired
systems in their facilities to extracting and mapping
the data to a repository or archive,” Runyon adds.
Retiring legacy applications will require
collaboration across your healthcare organization,
with clinicians and the IT team taking active roles.
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ADVICE FOR HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS SEEKING TO
CENTRALIZE PATIENT RECORDS, DECOMMISSION LEGACY SYSTEMS
Your plan should include the following steps:
• Identify the stakeholders and establish an
executive-level sponsor. Invite key representatives
from the clinical, IT and security departments to
join your core team.
• After determining the data that you want to
archive, allow users an opportunity to review it
and help identify any missing data.
• Identify source systems that you are planning to
decommission, such as EMR systems, lab systems
and systems that create documents or other forms
of unstructured content.
• Estimate the costs associated with these systems,
including licensing costs, server costs, storage costs
and operational costs.
• Document the requirements for the new system
you plan to implement, including the data,
security and user experience aspects.
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tests. Getting a full picture of a patient’s care
history improves diagnosis, treatment and overall
patient safety.
The ability to access all known patient information
will not only create a better overall care experience,
but can also save costs for the healthcare
organization, patients and other payers.
“The legacy decommissioning
problem has been accelerated by
the increasing rate of automation
within organizations, the adoption
and optimization of electronic health
record systems, the uptick in mergers,
acquisitions, consolidation activity
and other factors.”
Barry Runyon, vice president of research at Gartner
• Develop a strategy for extracting data from the
source systems.
• Design or configure the user application for
presenting the archived data.
• Extract the data from the source applications into
a staging area. Validate that all the data has been
completely and correctly archived.
• Test the system first with IT users. Then, in an
effort to get their input and buy-in, allow the
clinical users to try out the new system.
HOLISTIC APPROACH WITH
EMC DOCUMENTATION CLINICAL
ARCHIVING SOLUTION
Clinicians and patients are the ultimate
beneficiaries of an improved clinical archiving
system. Clinicians need an integrated, 360-degree
view of patient information, including medical
history, medications, lab results, procedure notes,
medical images, pathology reports and cardiology
November 2014
The EMC Documentation Clinical Archiving
Solution is a holistic approach to archiving all forms
of applications and information, both structured
and unstructured. It gives users live, on-demand
access to all archived patient records, documents
and images, and eliminates the need to navigate
multiple systems and user interfaces. Users are able
to see a complete view of patient history, diagnosis
and treatment at the point of care.”
The EMC Documentation Clinical Archiving
Solution, which is an XML-based unified archive, is
vendor-neutral, non-proprietary and can be scaled
on the enterprise level. It also easily integrates with
the EMR and offers a user-interface that allows
for easy access, search and information download
capabilities.
Also important is that the EMC solution is secure,
immutable, auditable and ensures regulatory
compliance needs.
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ADVICE FOR HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS SEEKING TO
CENTRALIZE PATIENT RECORDS, DECOMMISSION LEGACY SYSTEMS
Having all of these features in a clinical archiving
solution is critically important, since you need
to “select a decommissioning vendor that offers
a solution that can handle the most critical
applications, systems and/or data in your legacy
portfolio—and one you have the skills and resources
to support,” Runyon says.
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increasing size of the legacy portfolio have begun to
make legacy decommissioning a higher priority for
CIOs,” Runyon adds.
The EMC solution allows you to retire obsolete
legacy systems, while archiving information from
multiple applications in one central location. Users
get live access to information they need without
having to log in to several systems.
Other features of the EMC Documentation
Clinical Archiving Solution include the following:
• Because it is an open system based on xml, which
conforms to the Open Archival Information
System (OAIS)—instead of being constrained
to fit a vendor’s proprietary model—the EMC
solution allows your organization to design its
own data model.
• The EMC solution is a capable of archiving all
forms of medical database information, including
clinical documents, medical images, voice
recordings and print stream.
• It features a built-in Web application, API for
user interface into existing business applications
or portals and EMC authorization and access
control.
“The legacy decommissioning problem has been
accelerated by the increasing rate of automation
within organizations, the adoption and
optimization of electronic health record systems,
the uptick in mergers, acquisitions, consolidation
activity and other factors. These drivers and the
• The system is vendor-neutral and nonproprietary,
and eliminates need for data migrations.
And it’s fast. The system can access more than a
billion records, with each one coming up in less
than a second. n
EMC is a trusted healthcare solutions provider serving more than 5,000 healthcare customers worldwide.
We provide purpose-built, healthcare-specific solutions that are developed and tested to work together
seamlessly. And we’re meeting the healthcare industry’s challenges head on by transforming how enterprises
view, organize, access, manage and use patient information to create efficiencies and optimize care delivery.
November 2014
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