Retiring Legacy Applications: It's Not All About Cost
By Stephen Matheson, Vice President, Product Management and North American Sales, BridgeHead Software
From conversations with our customers, we know healthcare organizations, globally, are running up to 300 legacy applications behind the scenes despite their strategy for the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) to be the primary method of accessing clinical content. Although there are significant costs associated with maintaining these legacy applications, this practice — somewhat worryingly — seems to be commonplace.
As hospitals remain primarily focused on freeing data from departmental silos and legacy systems to make better care decisions in a team-based environment, there’s a great deal more to be gained by retiring legacy applications than how it affects the bottom line.
Preservation Of Patient Data
In order to address the current status quo, we need to first understand what value these obsolete applications have to the various stakeholders within hospitals (Finance, IT, CCIOs/CMIOs, clinicians, information managers, compliance/governance officers, etc.) and why they still persist in a modern hospital.
According to our online global survey, How Do You Manage Legacy Systems?, 90 percent of hospitals keep old applications running to preserve data when an application is replaced or retired. In addition, 8 percent admitted they never migrate data to a new application and 8 percent never extract the data into an archive. One respondent admitted they “lose the old data in some cases.”
Because legacy applications are typically run in silos, dispersed across the hospital, they are incredibly difficult to manage. In terms of storing and accessing clinical content, running multiple obsolete applications is inefficient and costly. So why is it accepted practice?
Patient Information Is Priority One
Our survey found the number one reason for not simply discarding old data is because it contains relevant patient information, something 90 percent of hospitals identified as a consideration. This was closely followed by regulations and compliance with 88 percent of respondents citing as a factor in data retention. Interestingly, almost a quarter of hospitals admitted to uncertainty or simply “playing it safe” when it came to preserving old data, raising some doubt over their motives and awareness of alternatives.
Generally, the rationale for preserving data and the pain points regarding the current method depend largely upon who you speak to within hospitals.
Legacy Applications Impact Clinicians, Finance, And IT
Most financial directors would be shocked at the total cost of operating, maintaining, and supporting legacy applications, from software licenses to power and datacenter floor space. Often, systems are maintained on a department level which obscures the true cost of legacy applications. Even after investing substantial sums of money in a new EMR solution, many hospitals continue to keep their old system running to maintain data that cannot be migrated (typically records over five years old). The costs of running two systems are significant.
Then there are staffing costs. Analysts estimate healthcare IT professionals spend up to 75 percent of their time managing legacy applications which would provide ample justification to explore viable alternatives. In addition to the huge drain on resources, the IT department should be concerned with security risks associated with running legacy applications.
With cyber and ransomware attacks regularly hitting the headlines, prevention has to be a core consideration, alongside a robust and tested disaster recovery strategy. Given that older technologies, whether hardware or software, are more prone to security loopholes as well as failures, outages, and/or corruptions, failing to retire legacy applications unnecessarily compromises the data contained within.
Naturally, clinicians are concerned with ease of access and use of patient data to make more informed decisions. One respondent to our survey told us, “Historic data helps in running data analysis algorithms for better decision making and indicates trends.” Another told us that “when used in anonymity (the data) can be helpful in predictive analysis.”
By unlocking data that resides in legacy applications and making it available as part of the EMR, clinicians gain access to a 360-degree view of current and historic information to improve patient encounters — whether consultation, diagnosis, and/or treatment. Ultimately, improving clinical service and having a positive impact on patient outcomes is the overarching mission of healthcare organizations.
Time To Challenge The Status Quo
The drivers for retiring legacy applications are overwhelming, so why are hospitals seemingly slow or reluctant to act? Many healthcare professionals are simply not making the connection and wrongly believe there is no easy way to extract data from legacy applications to make it available to those who need it, when they need it.
The costs associated with legacy applications are nothing more than unchallenged line items in the IT budget for the finance department. Legacy application maintenance is a headache for the IT department, but is seen as part of the job. Clinicians acknowledge they can’t rely too heavily on the data presented from legacy applications to be correct, up to date, and integrated. But, it shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be like this in today’s hospitals. We encourage everyone, whatever their role, to challenge the status quo.