Fresno, CA | February 12, 2019

Forward Advantage has today released a highly anticipated new white paper to educate healthcare organizations on their options for legacy data during an EHR or legacy system migration. With more than 25 years in Healthcare IT, Forward Advantage has a unique understanding of the challenges that today’s hospitals face. It uses this knowledge to develop solutions and services that improve access to information – including legacy data.

“Migrating to a new EHR is a large project with many challenges,” says Charles Williams, VP of migration and integration services at Forward Advantage. “We’ve learned a lot through our years as experts and have packaged that information into a white paper. We want to share our learnings and help hospitals make the right decision.”

With an increasing number of hospitals considering a future migration, many are left unsure of where to start. Legacy data remains a key issue due to aging systems, lack of internal resources, and financial constraints. However, knowing what to do with legacy data is the first step to a successful migration. Options include a full system migration, a partial migration (where some legacy systems are maintained), or a Historical Archive Viewer. There are pros and cons to each approach, and the white paper is designed to help hospitals make the appropriate decisions.

Forward Advantage offers expert-level migration services for any EHR, along with two new solutions to enhance a customer’s investment. The first is a Historical Archive Viewer which provides an efficient and affordable option for storing and accessing legacy documents and scans. The second is a SmartLaunch Button that alerts clinicians and other staff of important information contained within the Historical Archive Viewer or other systems, which they can access without leaving the EHR.

“We implemented the Historical Archive Viewer to view data that we are converting from an old Electronic Legal Record,” says Kim Hemphill, senior business analyst at Catawba Valley Health System. “We are migrating this data into MEDITECH with the help of Forward Advantage. The Historical Archive Viewer, along with the SmartLaunch Button, provides easy and convenient access to historical data for our clinical staff from within MEDITECH while we work on migrating the data into MEDITECH.”