Five Steps for Increasing EHR Performance and Decreasing Costs and Liability

Over time, healthcare organizations have experienced rapid expansion in their EHR databases due to the addition of new patients and the accumulation of patient visits and data.

For many, growing databases have added costs for storage, impacted system performance, and increased PHI liability.

If your organization is grappling with any of these EHR database issues, rest assured, you’re not alone. One approach to mitigate data issues is archiving or purging patient records from their EHR database. A decision to archive data should not be taken lightly. We want to emphasize the importance of carefully considering all aspects of patient data.

Let’s delve into several key EHR database management considerations that can assist your organization in addressing these challenges.

 

1. Improve EHR Performance

• Archiving infrequently accessed patient records frees up valuable resources within the EHR for overall performance gains.
• Opening charts with high volumes of data allows for faster response times within the EHR.
• Retrieving patient data from an archive is less resource-intensive than querying the live database

 

2. Database Reduction Cost Savings

• Archiving reduces storage costs. Storing large volumes of rarely accessed patient records in the EHR is inefficient.
• Your EHR/Hosting vendor may be charging for additional data storage. An archiving solution can reduce these costs.
• Lower cost drives can be utilized for archive storage, reducing your overall storage costs.

 

3. Compliance and Legal Requirements

• Older patient records, while not needed regularly, must be retained for compliance or legal reasons
• Archiving ensures that organizations meet healthcare regulatory obligations without cluttering the active database.

 

4. Preserving Historical Context

• Archiving maintains a historical record of patient care, research, and trends.
• Researchers, policymakers, and clinicians can analyze archived data for insights and decision-making.
• It’s important to find a solution that will return patient records to your EHR when you need them back in the EHR.

 

5. Purging EHR Data

• Purging unneeded EHR records reduces database size and can optimize performance.
• Removing unnecessary patient records from the EHR database reduces PHI breach risk.
• Make sure to speak to your legal advisor about your state’s data retention requirements.

 

It can give any healthcare organization pause when unnecessary data is impacting EHR performance and you’re not sure which data can be offloaded from your system or how to go about doing that. A robust archiving solution that carefully considers the areas outlined above may be the right fix.

For information about secure storage for your EHR data, click here and learn about our eMedApps CareFinity® Live Archive solutions.