Over the last 20 years, virtually all health systems and providers have replaced their legacy systems with an electronic HIS (JaWanna, Yuriy, Talisha, & Vaishali, 2016). Many of these institutions received significant financial incentives from the federal government if they demonstrated their Electronic Health Record (EHR) met the meaningful use certification criteria.
Even though healthcare providers received thousands to millions of dollars in incentive money, these time-intensive projects still presented unexpected costs—both financial and emotional. As the pandemic restrictions lift and healthcare providers budget new or upgraded HIS solutions, it’s tempting to get back to “normal” and staff onsite EHR implementation teams, but, for many implementations, especially active archiving, this isn’t necessary.
When done right, you can work with a fully remote active archive vendor and yield better results for less money.
How much of the project budget can be attributed to travel and expenses of resources?
According to The Commonwealth Fund (2022) a 2005 study showed on average, EHR implementations go over budget by an estimated 25%. Traditionally, most EHR projects require large onsite teams with dedicated internal and external resources before, during, and after go-live. These resources aren’t cheap and can quickly eat up a provider’s project budget if not carefully managed. Extra labor costs, travel expenses, and inevitable project downtime can put many projects’ budgets at risk
The healthcare market continues to consolidate through merger and acquisitions.
During a merger, duplicate systems, processes, and roles get absorbed into one structure. Redundancies are eliminated and a single EHR is put in place. Multiple legacy systems contain data that need to be safely and securely maintained for long periods of time but it’s expensive and cumbersome to maintain support for these multiple legacy systems. There is also an increased risk to having a large IT footprint.
Solution? As part of their EHR implementations and data strategy plan, many providers and organizations select an active archive vendor to streamline their data archive process, reduce their access points, and reduce overall costs. Moving data from the multiple legacy systems into a single active platform allows them the ability to maintain the data for point-of-care access by providers, support health Information Management (HIM) with legal medical record release of information, support the business office with active AR work down, support legal and compliance requirements, and give your research team the discrete data they still need to research for improvements in patient care.
Until the pandemic, most EHR implementation teams worked onsite.
In one example of a large-scale HIS conversion, more than 150 consultants would be on-site at any given time during the project. These huge teams and onsite resources incur weekly travel expenses, need high demand space, and require a hospital employees’ valuable time and expertise. These implementations also required a significant, and often unexpected, investment and requirement for onsite resources.
EHR implementations can overburden stressed-out staffs and lead to more burnout.
Healthcare workers have always faced a tremendous amount of stress. According to Denning et al. (2021) the COVID-19 pandemic further contributed to burnout, anxiety, and depression across all areas of healthcare.
When building an EHR implementation team, hospital leadership often recruits their top performers to be Subject Matter Experts (SME’s). This sets the project up for success but takes a big toll on employees who often need to work short-staffed already. SMEs can end up clocking extra hours for design sessions, functionality approvals, testing, etc. Depending on an employee’s exemption status, these extra hours can add up to a significant amount of unbudgeted salary over time.
With COVID-19 restrictions lifting across the country, many healthcare executives may want to get back to “normal” with an onsite EHR implementation team.
For some project deliverables it makes sense to keep some teams onsite for specific project milestones. But, when it comes to active archive solutions, that’s not the case. You don’t need to waste money on non-value activities like airfare, hotel, and meals. You don’t need to scramble for office space (a luxury in many hospitals and offices). And you don’t need to backfill resources since you have more flexibility to pull internal subject matter expert resources from the floor for virtual meetings, calls, and email follow-up, even when they are at different facilities across the enterprise.
In the archiving process of legacy data, remote work is proving much more efficient, effective, and financially easier by demanding fewer resources.
But, keep in mind, not all active archive vendors are equal.
When it comes to a fully remote team, find a proven leader in the industry.
You want to know that the vendor has a safe, secure, effective, and proven methodology in place to support you. Utilizing our client-partner focused approach, the MediQuant team helps you strategize to support your data life cycle management plan using our technology and with a level of service that is unparalleled in the industry.
At MediQuant, we’re changemakers and leaders. We pioneered active archiving and mastered a fully remote vendor partnership long before the pandemic forced the industry to do the same.
Our commitment to flexibility, integrity, and ‘keeping it real’ with our clients and employees sets us apart from others in our industry. We’ve proven that we can save money, drive value, and build relationships with our client-partners while working 100% remotely. Find out more about our unique culture, here. https://www.mediquant.com/company/
References
Aguirre, R. R., Suarez, O., Fuentes, M., & Sanchez-Gonzalez, M. A. (2019). Electronic Health Record Implementation: A Review of Resources and Tools. Cureus, 11(9), e5649. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.5649
Denning M., Ee Teng, G., Tan B., Kanneganti A., Almonte M., et al. (2021) Determinants of burnout and other aspects of psychological well-being in healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic: A multinational cross-sectional study. PLOS ONE 16(4): e0238666. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238666
JaWanna H., Yuriy P., Talisha S., & Vaishali P. (2016). Adoption of Electronic Health Record Systems among U.S. Non-Federal Acute Care Hospitals: 2008-2015. ONC Data Brief No. 35 May 2016. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/briefs/2015_hospital_adoption_db_v17.pdf
The Commonwealth Fund (2022). Cost Is Biggest Barrier to Electronic Medical Records Implementation, Study Finds. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newsletter-article/cost-biggest-barrier-electronic-medical-records-implementation