The Value of an Enterprise Active Data Archive Begins with Patient Safety

Patient safety is only possible with accurate and comprehensive medical records, and this includes those records available in the active archive. Despite the urgency, one of the biggest challenges in healthcare today is maintaining Longitudinal Records – one record per patient over time, across HIS systems, and among various facilities and treatments. Direct patient care, however, presents the most striking reason to keep data and make it useful and immediately accessible; clinical decisions and medication management rely on the ability of each provider to understand the full patient. Only active archived information in a longitudinal record with interoperability serves the various specialists and multiple treatment centers. The systems must connect the current HIS system to the historical data through the active archive, providing the big picture at the point of care. The challenge is to make the records of a patient’s history across multiple doctors, multiple years and multiple health systems both actively and conveniently accessible and viewable. The Michigan Health Information Network (2020) stated in its Longitudinal Record Use Case, that aLongitudinal Record, when used for treatment, payment, operations, public health, federal programs, individual authorizations, or permitted or required by law, allows providers and other healthcare professionals to have efficient access to clinical data. At the same time, the multiple access entry points and limited ability to see a patient’s record across all systems increases risk for audit and compliance departments including Health Information Management. Today, the importance of longitudinal records and the complexity of systems has created a strong relationship between providers, IT and credentialed specialists in the Health Information Management (HIM) department. Clinicians can use a single sign-on approach from their new HIS system to launch the patient’s historical longitudinal record in seconds to look across accounts and to provide continuity of care. The more healthcare organizations realize the benefits of maintaining an active archive, the more their data strategy and plan must include it. Well-planned transitions to enterprise active archiving are key to clinical success and continued patient safety initiatives, providing life-saving data at the point of care and beyond.