When medical software solutions were first introduced, early adopters were left with no choice, but to manually enter patient demographics into their new software and scan patient records manually. This was an incredibly tedious and time-consuming process that drained resources and facilitated the opportunity for inaccurate data due to keying errors. Today, many organizations are fearful of repeating the manual process involved with setting up their first medical software system and leary of paying high costs charged by potential new software vendors to have this data transferred. This can cause paralysis for organizations looking to move away from a software solution that no longer meets the needs or budget of their organization.
If you fall into this category and are paralyzed by the thought of data transfers, I’d like to invite you to consider the following solutions to potential roadblocks:
1. Find a software partner that does not charge you for data uploads
Talk with potential vendors to determine the true cost of data uploads because many vendors have steep start-up and import fees. However, vendors like RXNT, offer data uploads at no charge to ensure patient data such as demographics, insurance, and notes are uploaded into your account.
2. Consider a partial upload of data
Many organizations have access to patient data in an electronic format, even if the electronic format only represents a partial data set. For example, an organization has access to an Excel file that contains patient demographic data. In this case, load in the data you can and only choose to manually add data not available to you in an electronic format.
3. Familiarize your staff with Excel
Just because your current vendor does not provide the data in the exact format required by your new vendor, this does not mean your patient data cannot be imported. I know Excel can be daunting, but below are a few examples of solutions that can be learned by your team in 5 minutes or less:
- Most vendors request patient files be provided in .xls or .csv formats. If you are using a software system that only provides a data output in a .txt file, your staff can open a new Excel file and select to import data from a .txt file. Once the data is imported into Excel, remind your team to save the file in .xls or .csv format.
- Alternatively, you may be asked to provide a file that has the patient first name and patient last name in two separate columns, but your current system might provide an output with the patient first and last name in one column separated by a space or a comma. Excel allows you to perform a text to column function to ensure you can easily break the data into two columns.
- It is likely that any Excel challenge you are facing has been overcome by another individual or organization, and I’d encourage you to leverage the online resources that allow you to tap into this knowledge base. A quick “How To” search will lead your team to informative videos and step-by-step guides. (Speaking of step-by-step guides, stayed tuned for my upcoming blog, RXNT: Revolutionizing the Way Healthcare Organizations Adopt New Software Technologies.)
If you would like to learn if RXNT’s software solutions are a good fit for your organization, please give me a call at (410) 690-7492. If you see the value in adopting RXNT’s software solutions, let’s talk about what it will take to get your patient data loaded into RXNT!