I love the fall – the changing leaves, the shift to playoff baseball, the transformation of pumpkin-spiced everything, and the evolution into the holiday season.  Wouldn’t it be great if transitions in the Healthcare IT arena were as warmly embraced as these are? (as all my Yankees and Pirates fans shake their heads disagreeingly)

Almost 50% of large hospitals plan to replace their EHR by 2016

Given the HIT landscape and the emphasis on quality reporting, which we highlight in our infographic, transition is inevitable.  Acquisitions and mergers are commonplace, and with EHR utilization so prominent in this Meaningful Use-driven era, absorbing new groups with disparate EHRs presents a new set of challenges.  Many orgs have found that documenting with structured, reportable data is difficult enough in their own EHRs, let alone normalizing a foreign EHR’s data and assimilating it with their own midyear.

At Galen, we cut our teeth on data conversions across an array of applications, and have fielded answers to these commonly asked questions on multiple occasions:

1. Is all data from the legacy system converted, or can parameters be put in place to filter certain items out?
2. How is data that is recorded in the legacy system after the initial extract handled? How are those included in the conversion?
3. How long does a live conversion take?
4. Why does the conversion only grab the most recent instance of each item?
5. What happens when a patient is not able to be matched?

If your organization is preparing for a conversion and have asked any these questions, find the answers and learn more about how you can successfully tackle your transition here in Galen’s EHR Conversion whitepaper!