The Importance of Manual Abstraction During EHR Migration

When Regional Health, an integrated healthcare system with five hospitals and 24 clinics scattered across western South Dakota, made the decision to migrate the entire organization to a single electronic health record (EHR), they wanted to make the transition as seamless as possible for their providers and clinical staff. Alexia Gillen, DO, a family medicine provider and ambulatory medical information officer at Regional Health in Rapid City, South Dakota, said that once the decision was announced, providers across the system voiced concerns about what such a move would mean for the quality of data they’d be able to access in historical patient records during the transition.