How to Retire eClinicalWorks (eCW) Without Losing Access to Critical Data

Sunsetting an EHR like eClinicalWorks (eCW) is a significant milestone—but one that brings with it critical decisions about how to manage and preserve legacy patient data. Whether your organization is transitioning to a new EHR system or consolidating platforms after a merger, ensuring long-term, compliant access to historical data is essential.

At Two Point, we’ve helped healthcare organizations across the country successfully retire eCW while maintaining HIPAA-compliant, searchable access to legacy records. Here’s how to navigate this process without disruption, compliance gaps, or unnecessary costs.

1. Understand Why You Can’t Simply Shut Down eCW

Before powering down eCW, it’s important to recognize that healthcare data retention requirements don’t end when a system is no longer active. Federal and state laws typically require patient and financial records to be retained for anywhere from 7 to 28 years, depending on your location, patient age, and payer requirements.

If you shut down eCW without preserving access to this data, you could:

Compromise compliance with HIPAA, Medicare, or state-level retention laws
Be unable to respond to audits, subpoenas, or litigation
Be forced to write off claims due to inability to support billing or denials processing tied to legacy visits
Undermine clinical decision-making if patient history is not easily accessible

2. Don’t Rely on Flat File Exports Alone

Many organizations make the mistake of extracting raw data into flat files or PDFs, assuming that this is sufficient for long-term access. While exporting records is a necessary step, it’s not enough on its own.

Without a structured, searchable archive:

You lose the ability to quickly retrieve specific encounters, labs, or notes
Clinical context is harder to reconstruct
Account billing details and attachments may be separated or incomplete
You’ll lack role-based access controls or usage logs required for HIPAA compliance

That’s why building a purpose-built archive—specifically for your eCW data—is critical.

3. Use an Archive That Supports Clinical, Billing, and Legal Use Cases

When choosing an archive platform or vendor, it’s not just about storing the data—it’s about making sure you can use it.

At Two Point, our ACERT HIT Archive is designed to meet the needs of multiple stakeholders:

Compliance Teams need audit logs, access tracking, and retention policies
Clinical Staff need to find and review historical patient data efficiently
Billing/Finance need access to prior authorizations, remittances, and financial records
Legal/Administrative teams need tools to respond to subpoenas or medical necessity requests

Our archive supports search filters by patient name, patient birthdate, MRN, and more—without maintaining the full eCW system.

4. Leverage eCW-Specific Experience

One of the most overlooked challenges in retiring eCW is its complexity.

eCW databases include:

Encrypted progress notes
Custom forms and templates
Disparate attachment types
Discrete lab data
Billing histories tied to multiple table sets

Generalist data migration vendors often miss these intricacies, leading to missing data or inaccessible archives. With more than a decade of experience handling eCW-specific exports, Two Point ensures that all relevant clinical and financial data is extracted, validated, and securely archived.

5. Coordinate With Your New EHR Vendor Early

If you’re transitioning to a new EHR platform, such as Epic, Athenahealth, or NextGen, timing is critical. Delays or misaligned responsibilities between vendors can result in:

Data loss or duplication
Missed go-live deadlines
Incomplete access during the cutover period

We act as a project liaison—working directly with your incoming EHR vendor to align timelines, ensure legacy data is preserved, and avoid disruption to patient care or revenue cycle operations.

6. Build a Plan for Post-eCW Access and Support

Once eCW is retired and data is archived, your work isn’t done. You’ll need to:

Train internal teams on how to search and retrieve data
Set permissions by user role (e.g., clinical, billing, HIM)
Establish a support process for audit or legal inquiries
Document policies for how long data will be retained in the archive

Two Point provides customized training and documentation as part of every ACERT implementation—so your team is confident and self-sufficient from day one.

7. The Bottom Line: Retire eCW Without Risk

Retiring eClinicalWorks is an opportunity to reduce costs, streamline IT operations, and modernize your health IT infrastructure. But only if done right.

A well-executed archiving project helps you:

Eliminate legacy licensing and hosting costs
Preserve compliance with retention and HIPAA laws
Ensure uninterrupted access to patient history and billing records
Maintain confidence during audits, legal reviews, and payer disputes

Next Steps for eCW Archiving

Retiring eCW doesn’t have to mean sacrificing access to vital clinical and financial data. With the right planning, a proven archive partner, and eCW-specific expertise, your organization can move forward confidently—knowing that your data remains protected, compliant, and accessible for years to come.

Next Steps

Two Point’s ACERT HIT Archive is purpose-built for eCW. We help healthcare organizations:

Archive eCW securely and cost-effectively
Stay compliant with HIPAA and legal retention laws
Eliminate ongoing system maintenance costs
Streamline operations and avoid data silos

Schedule a quick call or request a project quote to learn how we can help.

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How to Retire eClinicalWorks (eCW) Without Losing Access to Critical Data