This is a decision that needs to be made per the practice needs.
Most EHR vendors will gladly accept plenty of your money to figure out a way to extract some necessary information from your current system and import it into the new system. My personal opinion is that this is a waste of money, as you may have many thousands of patients in your current system who for a variety of reasons, may not be coming again in the future. It will also vary greatly by specialty and type of practice.
Many practices (and this is what we did), had RNs enter PERTINENT information (history, problem list, medication list) from our previous EHR into the new EHR for any patient scheduled in the next 6 months. Clerical staff imported E/M, radiology, labs, pathology, but not things like insurance authorizations. At the time, we had been acquired as a private practice into a large healthcare system. The healthcare system had temp staff who specifically did this task when offices were acquired. There were 1.5 nurses, and 2 clerical and it took about a month.
How you want any old data categorized/imported is a decision that you need to make within the practice. Think about how often you might refer to it. If it's only the first time a patient is seen in the new system (if that), then maybe just 1 document for all the records. Or groups - E/M, labs, radiology, etc. If you are the type of practice that will constantly need to refer to the old documents (and not thousands of patients), then you may want to categorize them individually the same way records are categorized in the new EHR.
While after this project was over, there were some prior patients who scheduled, our existing staff were able to handle those since it wasn't 50 patients per day. Even 2 years later, we will need to occasionally import an old record.
Some personal tips -
1) Figure out a way (export PDF, or TIF, or whatever your current system will allow) to NOT print this and scan it. Save a file and import it. I have heard of practices actually printing and scanning, and it is a waste of resources (paper and staff time). That was supposed to be one of the selling points of EHRs in the first place - eliminating paper (
).
2) Involve your MDs/PAs/NPPs in the planning. Figure out what portions are truly essential, vs what would be helpful, vs what would be if the world were perfect.
3) Your MDs should not be the ones doing all the data entry for every patient. It is not a good allocation of their time.
4) Decide how much your existing staff can handle without overtime. Figure out how much additional work there is. You may decide you would rather pay existing staff overtime or hire temp staff you will need to train on both systems. Involving your existing staff is also excellent real world experience in the new system. So on the day of your go live, all the staff will already know all the nuances and tricks.
5) Go over you plan again. Make adjustments, and go over your plan again. And finally, make adjustments and go over your plan again. In case it isn't clear - PLAN.
Most of my advice does not apply if you are currently paper (I didn't think anyone still was, but I guess some have to be dragged kicking & screaming into the 21st century).
Good luck!
