Franciscan Health Alliance, based in Crown Point, Ind., transitioned a 140-physician practice to its new EHR, but needed a way to allow the physicians access to millions of patient records residing in the legacy system.
Vital signs and patient identifiers for 250,000 patients were not a part of the initial year-long conversion process. Franciscan Alliance turned to health IT software company InterSystems for interoperability technology and support from professional services firm EHR Evolution.
Through the partnership, Franciscan Alliance was able to ensure physicians had the data they needed without having to toggle back and forth between Epic and the legacy system. The six-week InterSystems HealthShare project ran alongside the overall Epic EHR implementation. The project was completed prior to the final Epic go-live date in August 2015.
"This was an excellent use of the InterSystems HealthShare platform, demonstrating a new and strikingly simple way to think of EHR data conversions. It's not always necessary to replicate all the data all at once or one time only. This new approach allows data access 'just in time,' as part of the physicians' natural work flow," said Jill Thompson, manager of application integration services for Franciscan Alliance.