In this world of digital information, electronic health records (EHRs) have become essential for healthcare providers to conveniently access data and provide appropriate treatment to patients. EHRs facilitate better coordination of patients, greater efficiency and improved patient care for the healthcare facilities while they empower patients with quick access to their health records. Further, to comply with the government requirements also, adopting EHR systems is essential. If you are already implementing electronic health records in your facility, but want to shift to different software because either the existing software is outdated or doesn’t suit your unique requirements, here are some aspects that you should consider while making a shift.
- Data migration: The most critical aspect while making a shift to a new EHR system is data migration. You must ensure that all the present data is migrated without any loss of data due to the differences in the way data is stored, organized and retrieved. Your new software can have different features and models that are not available in the old one, so mapping data from the old system to the new system could be challenging.
- Data storage: Managing data storage is also an aspect that you must think about carefully. If you have been using your own local servers until now, you may consider using a cloud solution for the new EHR solution. Cloud solutions could be beneficial when you want to scale up your operations and would need better storage capacity. Whichever solution you choose for your data storage, you must ensure that it’s robust and highly secured to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and its privacy rule.
- Certification: You must know that EHR software must be certified if you want to claim reimbursements for patients covered under Medicare and Medicaid. The government’s policies and procedures aim at improving healthcare facilities’ efficiency and lowering the cost of providing quality healthcare; for this, it’s essential that facilities use the latest EHR software and comply with all the regulatory requirements. So, to avoid the risk of denials of Medicare and Medicaid claims, you must incorporate certified software from the best EHR solutions providers.
If you want to make the switch regarding your EHR software, you must carefully consider all these aspects of appropriate data migration without any hassles, robust data storage facilities, and implementation of certified software. Further, you must be ready to invest a considerable amount of your time in understanding the requirements of the switch over and working with the EHR solutions provider to clearly understand and address the bottlenecks in the process of migration to new software.
Another key aspect of the migration process is that you may be unable to access patient data during the transition phase due to limitations in hardware facilities and bandwidth capacity. Hence, you must make appropriate arrangements to tackle this problem in coordination with your IT team and the EHR solutions providers. Choose the best EHR system for your facility that can support you efficiently for a long time even when you scale up your operations.