Partnerships Play Key Role in Successful Data Conversions

Independent physician practices are finding it increasingly challenging to go it alone, partly due to Meaningful Use requirements and other healthcare reform statutes. This has led to a number of practice acquisitions by large hospitals and healthcare systems. Such acquisitions have been shown to benefit these independent practices by providing much needed assistance with capital and management, as well as the negotiating clout with managed care plans and medical suppliers.

However, acquisitions are not without their challenges. There are many questions physicians need to ask that will directly affect the practice, several of which center around three key areas: capital, personnel and patient continuity-of-care. We will focus on continuity-of-care because the patient is the central concern of all healthcare physicians.

So your practice has been acquired by a large hospital or healthcare system. What does that mean from a continuity-of-care perspective? This means that you, as a physician, need to be able to access your patients’ medical history and clinical information. The entity who acquired your practice will need that same information. This is typically accomplished by moving the acquired practice over to a centralized practice management system and converting the data from the old legacy system into the new one.

Sounds easy, right? The answer is no. A successful data conversion has some unique challenges that will require cooperation between the physician and the team responsible for the conversion. This partnership is crucial toward ensuring a smooth transition of data between the old and new systems.

The first step is obtaining the old legacy data. While there are some instances where data can be pulled manually, most of the time the legacy system vendor will need to be involved. At times there can be resistance from the vendor to release the data. This is understandable as they are losing a client to another software system. While this is not the norm, a good partnership between the physician and the data conversion team will help overcome such roadblocks.

Once the data has been retrieved, the next step is the conversion process. Always remember that no two systems will have the same data structure or elements. The conversion process is designed to translate that data into a working format for the new system. To accomplish this, the conversion team needs to have specification documentation from both the old and new legacy systems. The partnership between physician and conversion team plays a role in this step as well. It is the physician who can contact their old vendor to obtain the documentation or help expedite communication between the vendor and the conversion team.

The final step in this process is testing and validating the data once it has been converted and uploaded into the new system. From a pure data perspective, the conversion team is able to validate that the data was uploaded correctly, but it is the physician practice that needs to test and validate the patient data from a practice standpoint. This ensures a comfort level in the layout of the data in the new system and further strengthens the patient workflow.

Clearly, communication and teamwork between the physician practice and the conversion team play a critical role throughout the entire data conversion process. It is important to ensure that the conversion team assigned to your practice thoroughly understands your business needs and maintains an open line of communication every step of the way.