We have systems that we still need to explore, but the ones that have been decommissioned or are in progress are:

• Carevue
• OnBase
• EDIM
• Pentax Endo
• GE Viewpoint

The information stored in these systems was needed by clinical staff. By converting the reports to MEDITECH, all reports can be retrieved from one system. Also, software and hardware support/maintenance with these vendors was becoming costly and/or unavailable. We wanted to free up our internal resources by not having to maintain these systems.

We continued with Forward Advantage because of the success of previous conversions and their familiarity with our MEDITECH system.

We have not had any major issues, but if we found any discrepancies while validating, our concerns were addressed immediately by the Forward Advantage analyst.

I would recommend this support model. Our project manager helps with the project planning and coordination, and she sets the goals and needs of the project. She has improved coordination between our analysts, the tech staff and the Forward Advantage conversion team.

I don’t have any figures to share, but there are clear benefits to decommissioning systems. The main benefit is having all the information available in MEDITECH. Continuing maintenance on these systems was too costly. Additionally, some systems were outside maintenance windows, which left us vulnerable to not having access to the data.

Clients should make sure to have an analyst work closely with the Forward Advantage team. Validations are extremely important, and Forward Advantage worked closely with us to resolve any issues.