The University of Maryland Medical System Archives 65TB of Data–Saving Millions

The University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) partnered with MediQuant to complete 40 projects in four years, achieving high ROI and end-user satisfaction.

“MediQuant does all the heavy lifting for us. They create the archive databases; they create the front ends; and they deploy the security. With MediQuant’s help, I’m able to manage our archive program with just one other individual on the archive and decommissioning staff.”

 

-Paul MacDonald
Manager of Archiving and Decommissioning, UMMS

During the first three years of their partnership with another archiving vendor, the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) encountered several challenges when attempting to archive their electronic health record (EHR) system. Over that three-year span, the vendor did not meet the health system’s expectations, completing only one system archive. This situation was compounded by difficulty accessing the archived data, which undermined the hospital’s goals. However, after transitioning to MediQuant as their new solution provider, the UMMS archiving program has hit its stride. In the span of four years, they have successfully archived nearly 40 EHRs, all while garnering high user satisfaction and saving the system millions of dollars annually in eliminated fees and licenses. Impressively, they have efficiently managed a staggering 65 terabytes of data within their archive system. Now, UMMS is expanding its capabilities to encompass the archiving of non-clinical systems, such as supply management and hospital financial systems.

Profile:

UMMS provides a “Better State of Care”

UMMS is an academic, private health system that’s focused on delivering compassionate, high-quality care and putting discovery and innovation into practice at the bedside. The integrated health system delivers 25% of all hospital care in the state through a network of 150 urban, suburban, and rural locations in 13 counties. The system consists of 12 hospitals with 2,458 licensed beds. They are committed to providing Marylanders a “better state of care.”

Challenge:

Making the difficult choice to change vendors

When MacDonald was named to his position, he was charged with fixing the previous archive solution. “Health system management created this position for me because they had invested in a product that wasn’t giving them a good return,” MacDonald recalls. “It wasn’t even being used by the people who needed it. They found it very difficult to use.”

He was given time to investigate the issue, but he quickly found the best path forward was to adopt a new archive solution and partner that would better meet the needs of UMMS.

Solution:

Archiving EHRs — and a whole lot more

After a period of discovery, MacDonald settled on MediQuant because of its vast experience with a variety of medical systems and applications. Before presenting his proposal to the health system board of directors, MacDonald compared the current contract costs to the contract he’d negotiated with MediQuant to determine the return on investment (ROI). He included savings from retiring legacy systems, storage costs, server costs, and maintenance.

“After more than three years, we’ve been very close to what my projections were originally,” MacDonald says. “The ROI has been right on target comparing what we’ve paid versus what we’re saving by canceling contracts, turning off servers or licenses, and eliminating vendor licensing fees. The savings have been significant.”

Once archived data has been moved into MediQuant’s DataArk and validation tests are performed, work begins on decommissioning applications. Nearly four years and 40 clinical systems later, UMMS is shifting its focus to archiving hospital financial and general ledger systems, supply management, and others.

“The beauty of MediQuant and DataArk is that it can accept other systems beyond clinical,” MacDonald says. He continued, “Any legacy solution that contains data needed for compliance or regulatory reasons will go into DataArk.”

Results:

65 terabytes of archive data from 40 projects

“We’re averaging about 10 systems a year, and the process itself has been refined to a point where it’s very simple from a manager’s standpoint,” MacDonald says. The archive holds 65 terabytes of data, the equivalent of more than 800,000 filing cabinets of data.

“The ease that DataArk has brought to the end user to find clinically significant or financially significant information is priceless,” MacDonald says. “I get nothing but positive comments from end-users. All I hear is ‘This is so easy. Why couldn’t we have had this 10 years ago?’ ”

UMMS is now expanding what’s eligible to be archived — often in response from employees who are discovering the value of archiving for themselves. MacDonald frequently receives emails from co-workers suggesting new archive projects.

Another new archive use UMMS and MediQuant are exploring together involves what to do with legacy data during a major upgrade of an existing software product. While legacy data is important for forecasting and compliance, loading legacy data onto an upgraded software platform can negatively impact performance. A better solution is to load a few years of data, and then archive the rest.

“I’ve enjoyed immensely working with the entire MediQuant team,” MacDonald says. “MediQuant has been one of the best vendors I’ve ever worked with. Our relationship has never seemed like a vendor-customer. It’s more like co-worker.”

Advice for Others:

Archive can ‘make or break’ an organization

When MacDonald took his current position, he assumed that archiving was just a backup of a system’s data, an opinion that many people have who haven’t been involved in a detailed archive project. Now, he knows different and is on a mission to teach others.

“I see how significant an archive solution is to an organization. It can make or break an organization right now with legal considerations alone,” says MacDonald. “Being able to produce a medical record with an audit trail from 10 years ago can be instrumental in winning a court case. Everybody focuses on today, on patients in the hospital today, but without the historical data that’s there, the care wouldn’t be anywhere near as comprehensive.” His advice:

  • Educate yourself and relevant stakeholders on what archiving can mean versus merely backing up files.
  • Make a list of the systems your organization wants to archive. Think beyond EHRs and clinical systems to financial systems, supply chains, hospital operations, and others. Pay particular attention to systems that hold data needed for regulatory or legal reasons.
  • Select a vendor with experience archiving the types of systems you’ve identified. Ask for references and contact them. Is the archived data easy to find? Is it still usable? How easy is the vendor to work with?
  • Perform due diligence on the data storage needs of the systems you plan to archive. How large does the data repository need to be, and does it make better sense to archive on-premise or in the cloud?

Results

  • 40 completed archive projects in less than four years
  • 65 terabytes of data under archive management
  • Delivery of expected ROI
  • High user satisfaction

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