Legacy Data Archiving

I am excited to introduce KLAS’ first Legacy Data Archiving report. Though data archiving has been around for a long time, the space has recently seen explosive growth, largely due to mergers and acquisitions among health systems. A lot of providers are still uninformed about data archiving and don't know exactly how it works or that it is even available.

As large systems buy community hospitals, physician practices, and ambulatory groups, they need to move those sites to their enterprise platforms. The problem is that storing data in the new or old application is expensive, especially old data. Data archiving involves taking the old data and putting it into an accessible off-premise cloud or data center of some kind.

Financial Impact

The vast majority of interviewed providers said that their data archiving solution has saved them money. That is no surprise given that maintaining an old application can require support, hosting, and licensing costs. Those providers who have yet to see an ROI only recently began using their archiving solution and expect to see a positive financial impact in the future.  

Providers should note that the cost savings will vary based on how much data they have and how much their legacy system is costing them.

Vendor Performance

Most of the vendors are doing well and have good ratings, but they didn’t necessarily get their ratings in the same way. Relationship and culture, efficient accessibility, and specific expertise—such as different approaches to financial and clinical data—all contribute to customer satisfaction. Some vendors focus on clinical migrations, some develop excellent customer relationships, and some have sophisticated tools for things like A/R rundowns. However, all the data archiving vendors are trying to broaden beyond working just in the acute or ambulatory space.

Although the role of support is almost exclusively on the front end of a migration project, it can’t be overlooked. Some vendors also struggle with the architecture of their tools, but once those tools are in place, they tend to have superior functionality.

However, vendors should be more up front about their timelines and what the provider organizations need to commit to in order to help get the data out. All players within the project have to cooperate, including the legacy system vendors.

The Expansive Future

Data archiving isn’t the only way to deal with old data, but providers should consider it when looking at their strategies for storing legacy data. There is no denying that it is a good way to save costs.

Data archiving will only continue to expand as more mergers happen and more organizations move to other systems. We are seeing rapidly growing yet steady market. Organizations still have data in different places and different formats, and it is important for them to think about their long-term plans for moving their data off premises while still being able to analyze it.

KLAS is actually doing a follow-up report to capture the recent changes in data archiving and to collect research on several new players in the space. We are excited to add that data to the mix and see how it can help providers with their data archiving strategies.

     Photo cred: Shutterstock, andreync