Data Archival
Leverage Healthcare Data Archival Opportunity Beyond Compliance
As healthcare organizations grow through mergers, acquisitions, and EHR transitions, legacy systems multiply - each carrying critical clinical, financial, and operational data. Healthcare data archival is more than a compliance exercise; it’s a strategic opportunity to reduce costs, strengthen security, improve care, and simplify access to historical information.
At 314e, we view archival as a long-term investment in data integrity, transparency, and operational excellence.
Why Healthcare Data Archival Matters
- Archiving significantly reduces or eliminates exorbitant IT costs associated with maintaining legacy systems, aging servers, software licenses, and IT support. Savings can be substantial, with one health system realizing over $2 million and another estimating over $300,000 over five years. One source suggests savings of 70-80% on data retention costs.
- It streamlines operations by consolidating disparate systems into a single archive, reducing vendor management and IT support costs.
- Archival solutions facilitate efficient patient record access, leading to time savings for Health Information Management (HIM), clinical, and revenue cycle teams.
- Automated data purging processes help manage data according to retention policies.
- Expedited data validation processes during migration also contribute to overall efficiency.
- Archiving ensures continuity of care by making historical patient records readily accessible to clinicians and HIM teams. This allows for a full picture of patient health, fuels trending views with discrete historical data, and supports informed care decisions in real-time.
- Many solutions offer Single Sign-On (SSO) integration from the active Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems like Epic or MEDITECH, providing immediate and efficient access to legacy records within the patient context. Some even provide a visual cue in the go-forward EHR when legacy records are present.
- It helps organizations move from scattered records to a single, unified patient record, enhancing the patient experience.
- Archived data can include specialized clinical views such as lab results, flow sheets, and growth charts. Previously unsearchable data can become keyword searchable, improving usability.
- Archiving is crucial for meeting various data retention requirements and complying with state and federal regulations, including HIPAA and the 21st Century Cures Act. This is particularly vital for unique state laws, like Florida's "Sunshine laws" requiring perpetual record retention.
- It supports Release of Information (ROI) workflows for patients, other providers, and payers, facilitating patient-mediated data exchanges.
- Archival solutions ensure record integrity by validating migrated data from various legacy systems.
- They offer granular purge parameters for superior record management and compliance.
- Detailed audit logs track user actions, access to sensitive patient records ("Break the Glass" functionality with justifications), and ROI requests, crucial for maintaining accountability and compliance.
- Patient Health Information (PHI) is protected through secure storage, role-based access controls (RBAC), and advanced encryption.
- Archiving helps fortify defenses against cybersecurity threats by allowing organizations to decommission old, unsupported, and unpatched legacy systems that pose significant security risks. Eliminating vulnerable legacy servers is a key benefit.
- It decreases the risk of technical vulnerabilities and compliance issues associated with maintaining numerous disparate systems.
- Consolidating data into a single archive bolsters cybersecurity for the entire organization.
- Providers of archiving solutions often maintain high security certifications, such as HITRUST CSF<sup>®</sup>, demonstrating compliance with a high volume of security controls.
- Features like unique data isolation further prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data.
- Archiving allows organizations to consolidate data silos from a multitude of legacy systems, including clinical, financial, and business data (e.g., EMR, billing, ERP, HR/payroll) into a centralized, secure platform.
- It provides a scalable solution that can grow with the organization, accommodating future mergers, acquisitions, and additional facilities.
- A standardized process for archiving and decommissioning positions the organization for long-term success in data management.
- Modern archival solutions are often FHIR-native or support conversion to standardized formats like HL7-v2 or C-CDA, simplifying data exchange and interoperability with other healthcare systems.
- Archived data can fuel population health management applications, data warehouses, and analytics tools (e.g., Epic Healthy Planet), enabling data-driven decisions and unifying healthcare data into a single longitudinal record.
- It addresses the challenges of transitioning from legacy systems by allowing a unified extraction process for both data conversion into the new EHR and archival, saving time, risk, and money.
In essence, data archival is an essential strategy for healthcare organizations to effectively manage the complexities of historical information, ensuring operational continuity, financial prudence, regulatory adherence, and ultimately, improved patient care.
Muspell Archive: FHIR-Native Data Archival with Seamless Epic Integration
Muspell Archive is 314e’s flagship cloud-based, FHIR-native healthcare data archiving solution, designed for secure archiving and retrieval of legacy data from Electronic Health Records (EHRs). It ensures your historical data remains accessible, secure, and cost-effective.
Key Features and Benefits
FHIR-Native Architecture
Built from the ground up on the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard, Muspell Archive ensures consistency, usability, and long-term accessibility of archived data. Every data element is stored in FHIR format, simplifying exchange and sharing with other healthcare systems and making it compliant with regulations like the 21st Century Cures Act.
Seamless Epic Integration
Muspell Archive offers a user-centric approach with seamless integration into Epic. All archived data is available with a single click via patient-level Single Sign-On (SSO) directly within Epic HyperDrive, ensuring clinicians never have to leave Epic to find patient data at go-live. It supports SMART on FHIR® in-app launch.
Comprehensive Data Archival
Muspell Archive handles both clinical data (Problems, Allergies, Medications, Immunizations, Encounters, Vitals, Lab Results, Imaging Results, Procedures, Notes, Assessments) and non-clinical data (financial, accounting, receivables, HR, general ledger, supply chain). It supports various document and image formats, including Plain Text, RTF, PDF, HTML, XML, TIFF, JPEG, and PNG.
Advanced User Experience
- Patient-Centric Interface: An intuitive, unified dashboard with patient-first navigation provides instant clinical insights.
- AI-Powered Search: Advanced intelligent search capabilities allow users to quickly locate specific patient data, improving efficiency and outcomes.
- Customization: Users can personalize the interface, layouts, and settings to match their workflows, including screens, users, and service areas.
Robust Security and Compliance
- HIPAA and 21st Century Cures Act Compliant: Muspell Archive is cloud-based and fully compliant with HIPAA and the 21st Century Cures Act, promoting data transparency and patient access.
- Secure EHR-Role-Based Access: Granular Role-based Access Control (RBAC) is enforced at the user and service area levels, along with user-level audit logging, data isolation, and sensitive chart access restrictions.
- Asynchronous Release of Information (ROI): Flexible ROI workflows align with ONC regulations to enhance patient access to health data.
- Patient Data Purge: Offers various patient data purging options, including an Auto Purge feature based on selected criteria, ensuring data management efficiency and compliance with state laws. A certification of destruction can be generated.
Unique and Proven Data Conversion Process for Archival
314e’s approach leverages proprietary software to extract data from legacy EHRs and convert it into formats ingestible by Epic (FHIRв, HL7 v2, CCD, CSVs, flat files). They achieve this by directly connecting to legacy databases via a site-to-site VPN, creating real-time connections that minimize gap loads at Go-Live. This unified approach for both conversion and archival saves time, cost, and risk.
Expertise Across 30+ Legacy EHR Applications
314e has extensive experience with data conversion and archival from various legacy systems:
- Cerner to Epic Transition: 314e has a unique technique that allows 100% of discrete data from Cerner to be archived and available via Epic HyperDrive on Day 1 of Epic Go-Live. Unlike traditional methods that rely on costly and outdated Cerner database backups, 314e works directly with the live Cerner Oracle database. They efficiently query large tables like CE_BLOB using parallel queries and decrypt documents in OCF format without additional fees, ensuring seamless integration and continuity of care.
- MEDITECH to Epic Conversion: Successful conversions and archival from MEDITECH Magic, Client Server, and Expanse are performed. 314e utilizes MEDITECH’s SQL-based Data Repository for efficient extraction and converts data into CCDs for PAMI (Problems, Allergies, Medications, Immunizations) tailored for Epic’s outpatient interface specifications. They also create index-ready PDFs/TIFFs for OnBase ingestion and provide MDM messages for direct access to archived documents within Epic Hyperdrive.
- eClinicalWorks (eCW) to Epic Conversion: With approximately 50 eCW data conversions completed, 314e performs smart data extraction via eCW’s MS SQL Server database. They can enable direct discrete data import of PAMI into EMR charts and offer options to bypass provider reconciliation when eCW is the sole outpatient EMR. Index-ready PDFs/TIFFs for OnBase ingestion are also created.
- Non-Clinical Data Archival: For non-clinical data from ERP systems (like Lawson, Oracle, SAP, Workday), 314e extracts relational tables ‘as-is’ into a modern data lake. Analysts can access this data through a web-based SQL interface or custom web-based reports and dashboards (e.g., using Apache Superset).
Benefits of Partnering with 314e for Data Archival:
Faster Decommissioning and Cost Savings
Secure archival processes allow organizations to retire outdated hardware and eliminate pricey maintenance and licensing contracts sooner.
Avoid Hidden Costs
Transparent pricing with no surprises, ensuring you understand all costs upfront and can plan your budget effectively.
Increased Staff Efficiency
Clinicians and ROI staff gain single-click access to legacy data within Epic, reducing search time and boosting productivity.
Comprehensive Data Access
Access complete patient history in Epic HyperDrive from Day 1, ensuring continuity of care.
Accreditations and Technology Partnerships
314e holds an Epic Agreement since 2006, allowing staff certification, and maintains full Epic UserWeb access (Nova, Galaxy, Sherlock) with pre-approved Foundation System build access. They have multiple applications integrating with Epic in the Epic Showroom. 314e is also SOC 2 Type II compliant, KLAS reviewed, an Arch Collaborative Member, a proud CHIME member since 2013, and NCQA Data Aggregator Validation as a Certified Data Partner.
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Contact 314e Today!
To learn how 314e can streamline your data archival and conversion, ensuring secure, compliant, and accessible legacy data within Epic, schedule a free consultation today.
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