Research

The prevalence of organizational acquisitions within the healthcare industry, as well as a continual focus on system consolidation to improve efficiency, has led many IT leaders to investigate strategies for decommissioning legacy applications and extracting data while retaining appropriate access levels. These considerations can be complicated by the need to meet data retention standards established by CMS and other state and federal regulatory bodies. In order to ensure that all of these standards are met while maintaining access to data for employees who require it, organizations must establish clear procedures and policies for application transfer and sunsetting.

The Academy spoke with the chief information officer at an academic health system about the organization’s strategies for sunsetting applications and consolidating information systems. He notes that one of the primary roadblocks to establishing clear standards is the conflicting priorities of organizational departments.

“The first response that every department gives you is, ‘We need it,’” he says. “You really have to go through the discussion process and understand why—is it part of the legal medical record? Do you need it for audits or legal liability? In each case, we ha