While implementing an EHR can have a profound positive impact on your business, sometimes you have to concede that it isn’t working. For whatever reason, whether it’s down to the functionality or complexity of the platform, businesses can occasionally find they have regressed under their new system and have no choice but to cut their losses and look for a new EHR solution.

The important thing is not to look at your change of EHR as an admission of failure, but rather another opportunity to get the most out of your business, having gained first-hand experience of what doesn’t work. EHR vendors will no doubt be tripping over themselves to win your business, but the greatest challenge when changing EHR is no doubt data migration.

EHR Data Policy

Its your data and you should be able to extract it free. If your EHR provider charges you for the data access or for your self backup then FLEE IMMEDIATELY. They either cannot provide the data or do not have a clear policy on the data. This also means if there is a breach or system crash your business is in jeopardy.  Your data is crucial to your business.

Why migrate from an existing EHR (Electronic Health Records)?

 It isn’t uncommon for businesses to change their EHR solution. Some of the reason told us from users of other EHR are:

• System not too flexible.
• Hidden cost.
• System is too rudimentary
• No mobile view.
• Limited documents available.
• Hidden pricing schemes.
• Not flexible to our business need.
• Need better reports.
• Need to create reports easily.
• Lack of proper mechanism for integration across other systems.
• There is no large ecosystem of providers and you need to depend on the vendor for every functionality
• Integration capability is only an API for which you need costly consultants.
• Security is rudimentary or not very convincing.

How can we do the migration?

Planning is everything when it comes to data migration, as not only must a number of tasks be carried out to ensure an effective product switch, but they must also be performed in the right order. We will start out by listing good practice for any kind of data migration, regardless of which EHR (Electronic health records) you are switching from and to.

The two key steps are:

1. Explore and assess the data in your source system 

We extract the data from the source system and then assess the quality and the flow of the data. Knowing this gives us a true view of the migration and the deployment process. After we successfully extract the data develop the plan to map this data specifically to your business need.

2. Data profiling and cleansing

The data extracted and mapped undergoes the cleansing process. The cleansing process helps you to evaluate the missing links in the previous EHR (Electronic health records) and enables the creation of a better data strategy for the organization. After the data is profiled and cleansed its pushed into the THS EHR system.