Unlocking the Power of Legacy Data Archiving to Deliver Better Patient Care

A patient’s health record is the key to providing outstanding care. That includes a full accounting of major health events, whether they took place last week or 10 years ago and whether they occurred under the care of the patient’s current physician, a physician across town, or a clinician in another state. Many patients have occasion to question how well their physician understands their health history. Perhaps an event like a birth or a cardiac issue occurred many years ago but is relevant to what they’re experiencing now. That’s where legacy data comes in: the ability to pull see all relevant clinical documentation in one place, regardless of the treating physician at the time or the system where it was originally stored. There’s another piece to care coordination, which is the time it takes a physician to find the older data they need. Being able to access legacy data from within their EHR (as opposed to searching another system or requesting old records from someone) is the key to ensuring robust care management without adding to physician stress. In short, legacy data not only improves care coordination, it boosts both patient and physician satisfaction.

Legacy data can enhance patient engagement in several ways. First, having legacy data available in patient portals greatly improves patients’ confidence, empowering them to. In the past, many patients were instructed to use a portal aimed at easing access, only to find missing information in their health record. This is an enormous cause for concern: “How will my doctor know this is my third valve replacement, not my first, if the other two aren’t documented here?” Second, legacy data is critical to understanding patient behaviors. Does he or she fill their prescriptions? Take medications as directed? Take steps suggested by their physician to get better or live a healthy lifestyle? When physicians have a complete view of both historical and more recent behavior, patients feel understood and tend to open up about their concerns and health issues. Third, patients have a dramatically better experience when practices run smoothly, and legacy data is important to achieving that. For example, having a complete picture of a patient’s financial data is vital when negotiating a payment plan. Similarly, staffers with easy access to a patient’s full financial picture are more efficient, to the point where they can take the time to engage with patients. This mitigates the uncomfortable feeling that the financial person is just trying to get the patient off the phone.

Legacy data has a key role to play in the clinical research and innovation stemming from AI. We’re all aware that AI is only as smart as the data it’s trained on, and legacy data can greatly enhance healthcare models. In the next few years, we’ll see improved health outcomes through better diagnostic suggestions and prompts when a further investigation is warranted, improving patient health and satisfaction. We’ll also see models that use AI to predict claims outcomes and patient payment patterns. The result will be streamlined claims processes and more informed patient-payment negotiations.

Patients don’t spend time thinking about CMS regulations, but they certainly understand the importance of care quality. Legacy data is beneficial in this area, helping physicians track the data CMS needs to identify the root cause of medical incidents to reduce medical errors and medication dispensing issues. Legacy data also aids practices with benchmarking, helping them identify patterns in care or staffing that might have contributed to an issue. The same data is key to proving compliance with data collection regulations and other rules.

Let’s face it, old data is problematic. Storing it in an old system means keeping that system up and running, an expensive proposition. Migrating it means making decisions about how the migration will occur, where the data migrate to, and how much will be available to providers from within the EHR.

For many, the solution is an archive that’s contextually linked to the EHR, letting providers easily access older systems to retrieve patient data. Here are a few considerations regarding data archiving:

• Your legacy data may include errors, and the archiving process presents a great opportunity to clean it. Develop a strategy for finding duplicates, fixing errors, and purging data that is outside your retention policy.
• The archiving process matters, so make sure your archive partner will ensure your data won’t lose context, will support provider workflow, and is accessible to patients as needed.
• Interoperability is essential. Your archive should be robustly tied into your EHR, whether it’s via a traditional interface like HL7, APIs within your EHR, or middleware.
• Security is also essential. Your legacy data should be HITRUST certified, and users should only be able to access the data needed for their work.