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Good Clinical Practice: A Guide to Clinical Data Archiving
Clinical archiving allows healthcare organizations to store and manage data from multiple sources in a singular location. This can include patient records, clinical images, and other forms of data. By moving healthcare data from legacy EHRs to a common archive, healthcare organizations benefit in many ways.
Today, we’ll tell you more about these benefits as they relate to clinicians, healthcare information managers, information technology, and revenue cycle management.
To begin, let’s talk about how you will know if clinical data archiving is right for your organization.
Is Data Archiving Right For Your Organization?
Suppose your healthcare organization now utilizes advanced electronic medical records (EMRs) or electronic health records (EHRs) systems but is still using a combination of newer and legacy applications. In that case, this is a good sign that clinical archiving is a smart next step to take.
Outdated legacy systems pose many challenges for many organizations, but especially for healthcare providers. They can be inefficient, difficult to use, and often unable to interface with newer applications. This can make data exchange between systems a time-consuming and costly proposition.
In some cases, the data from these legacy systems are no longer accessible at all because the vendor no longer supports the system. This “orphaned data” issue puts patient care and safety at risk because it can prevent clinicians from accessing important information about a patient’s medical history.
Clinical archiving provides a way to address each of these challenges. It does so by consolidating data from multiple sources into a single location. This has several benefits that we will explore in more detail below.
Benefits of Healthcare Data Archiving
In general, archiving is likely a good solution for you if you want to improve the way you store and manage clinical data. Now, let’s take a more detailed look at how clinical archiving can benefit different members of your healthcare organization.
Benefits for Clinicians
If you’re a clinician, clinical archiving can offer you several benefits, including:
- Improved patient care: When clinicians have quick and easy access to complete patient records, they can make better-informed treatment decisions.
- Increased efficiency: By consolidating data from multiple sources into a single location, clinical archiving can help clinicians save time when searching for information.
- Reduced risk of errors: When clinicians have to switch between multiple applications to find information, they are more likely to make mistakes. Clinical archiving can help reduce the risk of errors by making data more accessible.
Benefits for Healthcare Information Managers
For healthcare information managers, clinical archiving can pose significant advantages, including:
- Better data management: A central archive makes tracking and managing data from multiple sources easier.
- Improved security: You can better secure sensitive information by consolidating data into a single location.
- Increased efficiency: A clinical archive can help reduce the amount of time spent searching for data and improve the overall efficiency of your healthcare organization.
- Compliance: In many cases, regulatory agencies (including HIPAA) require that healthcare organizations maintain certain types of data for a certain period. A clinical archive can help you meet these requirements.
Benefits for Information Technology
Clinical archiving can also offer benefits for your information technology (IT) team, including:
- Improved system performance: When data is consolidated into a central archive, it frees up space in your system and improves overall performance.
- Reduced costs: By consolidating data into a central archive, you eliminate the need to maintain multiple systems, saving your healthcare organization money over time.
- Improved security: As we mentioned above, clinical archiving can help improve the security of your data by consolidating it into a single location.
- Greater flexibility: An archive can give you more flexibility when integrating new applications or systems.
Revenue Cycle Management Benefits
Finally, clinical archiving also offers a number of advantages in terms of revenue cycle management (RCM):
- Improved reimbursement: When clinicians have quick and easy access to complete patient records, they can submit claims more accurately and efficiently.
- Reduced denials: By consolidating data into a central archive, you can eliminate duplicate records and other errors leading to claim denials.
- Improved collections: With complete and accurate patient records, you can improve your collections process and increase your overall revenue.
As you can see, there are many benefits of clinical archiving for different healthcare team members. Data archiving may be the right solution for you if you want to improve the way you store and manage your organization’s data.
Clinical Data Archiving FAQs
We understand you might still have questions about data archives, so we’ll answer many of those questions next.
What is a clinical data archive?
A clinical data archive is a central repository for storing and managing clinical data. This data can come from multiple sources, including electronic health records (EHRs), patient portals, and claims systems.
How does it work?
Clinical data archiving works by consolidating data from multiple sources into a single location. This makes it easier for clinicians to access complete patient records and helps improve the overall efficiency of your healthcare organization.
What are the benefits of clinical data archiving?
Clinical data archiving has many benefits, including improved patient care, increased efficiency, reduced risk of errors, better data management, improved security, compliance with regulatory requirements, and more.
How do I get started?
If you’re interested in clinical data archiving, the first step is to contact healthcare data conversion specialists that offer this type of solution, including Two Point.
Data Archiving Solutions from Two Point
To learn more about our clinical data archiving solutions, contact us today. We’ll be happy to answer any questions and help you get started with this important healthcare solution.
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