Our purpose at Lost Creek Consulting is to help you make Centricity Electronic Medical Records a central player in your clinical data environment.

We have extensive experience converting data from various and diverse electronic medical records systems to GE's Centricity EMR. Our implementation consultants guide your clinic through all the necessary steps for successful data conversion and interface applications. We help you track and meet your milestones to ensure the success of your conversion and interface projects.

Data Migrations
Centricty to Centricity Migration
Other EMR to Centricity Conversion
Database Divorce
Data Export
Interface Management

When you do your “go-live” planning, a major consideration will be how to get existing data from your source database into the patients' charts in Centricity EMR. Keying the data manually is slow, expensive and prone to human error. A manual migration requires the involvement of expensive, high-level employees and takes their time away from the primary task of seeing patients.

Lost Creek Consulting offers a complete solution: knowledge and experience in medical records implementation, software tools, training, consulting and project management services.

Automated migrations make your EMR go-live easier:

• Improves the quality of patient data
• Assures the accuracy of patient data
• Reduces the cost of your data conversion
• Expedites your go-live date

By choosing an automated migration, you can have your data moved for a fraction of the cost of having it hand-keyed. Lost Creek Consulting converts your data swiftly. This helps you avoid lost revenue and provides you with accurate results, avoiding the mistakes that are inherent with manual data entry.

Lost Creek Consulting, Inc. can load the following types of data from your old system to Centricity EMR:

• Problems and Procedures
• Medications and Allergies
• Immunizations
• Observations including Lab Results, Vitals and Histories
• Scanned Images
• Documents and Notes
• Data from homegrown EMRs
• Other information – Referring Providers, Insurance Carriers, Billing data, etc.

How exactly does this process work?

1. The first step is to extract the data from your existing system. You can ask the source database company to extract the data, or Lost Creek Consulting can conduct the extraction for you.
2. Once the data has been extracted, Lost Creek consultants design analysis programs to read the extracted data files.
3. We then create a demographics export relationship by location of care or by responsible provider to import the data to the target database.
4. HL7 ImageLink files are produced in the target database and the images are copied into a DocuTrak folder structure.
5. LCC provides an encounter form to display the problems, meds, allergies and directives to be imported into the patient chart when the patient is first seen by a provider using Centricity.
6. Create HL7 files for directly importing RTF files into LinkLogic.
7. Utilize the LabLink structure to populate discrete data fields with observations, vitals and labs.
8. Work with our licensed Cross Reference Editor tools and analyzers to map medication DDID /NDC codes, lab ICD-9 codes and immunization codes from the source database to Centricity EMR codes.

Homegrown EMRs

Have any of your physicians developed their own Electronic Medical Records system? Do they have Microsoft Access databases, spreadsheets, or other documents with clinical data? Lost Creek Consulting is able to convert these types of data into a usable form for Centricity EMR. We can import demographics, scanned images and billing data. Please contact us to discuss all the ways we can preload your medical records. We can make your go-live day as easy as possible and enable your providers to be as productive as they can be through this transition.

Other Clinical Data

There are many cases where procedure codes in your old billing system contain other relevant clinical data. Preventative health measures such as cardiac stress tests and prostate checks can be loaded into the EMR flow sheet.

Moving a Doctor’s Patients from one Centricity EMR database to another Centricity EMR database

Occasionally a doctor will want to take all the patient medical records from one Centricity EMR database to another. This can normally be accomplished using LinkLogic, with some additional steps from an encounter form and an external program. Preparation: Create a project plan – review it with the doctor

We have found that not reviewing the project plan with the doctor is the surest cause of problems. The preload is not perfect; you can get the documents over if you are careful, but things will not look just the same once they are moved.

Be sure you have sufficient time allotted. This is not a quick process done in a few hours. It takes a long time to export and import the documents and observations. The attachments process can be tricky and will need an application from Kryptiq if you are using DocuTrak. Moving the problems, medications and allergies also need careful attention so we can do it correctly.

Steps: Move patient demographics

By creating a demographics export relationship in the source Centricity EMR database, it is possible to export all demographics.

Create and import clinical summary documents

The clinical summary document gives the provider a single place to look for all the discrete data for each patient on the date of the transfer. LinkLogic has a standard clinical summary document that works for most clinics. If you need more or less information than that, LCC has a custom clinical summary application that can be modified to fit your exact requirements.

Moving Documents

NotesLink export will export all chart notes. NotesLink import will bring those notes in to the new EMR instance.

Moving Scanned Images

NotesLink export will extract all the pointers to scanned images. You will also need to copy the images themselves from your documents server. A program is available from GE for renaming the image pointer on the new EMR.

Moving observations

Observations are all the clinical items associated with a patient visit. This includes lab results, vital signs, and all discrete data captured in an encounter form.

Create an export observation relationship in the source database. LabLink can import these items on the target system.

Extract Problems, Medications, Allergies and Directives

These clinical lists are different from the previous steps. These lists are not imported all at once, but are imported as the provider sees the patient for the first time. The first time the patient is seen after the data migration, the PMAD encounter form displays, allowing the provider to select the problems, medications and allergies to import into the new chart.

Other Data

Other data can also be migrated from one Centricity database to another. Contact us at info@lostcreekconsulting.com for additional information.

You have decided to implement GE Centricity EMR as your new electronic database for your patients’ medical records. Congratulations! Now the question is what to do with the records in your other EMR. Lost Creek Consulting, Inc. (LCC) specializes in converting this data to Centricity EMR. LCC offers a complete solution: Knowledge and experience in medical records implementation; specialty software tools; training; project management and a proven project plan. This document will outline the steps necessary to perform your EMR to Centricity EMR conversion as seamlessly as possible.

Preparation: Create a project plan

LCC will provide the clinic with a comprehensive Project Proposal, with a detailed, week by week, project plan covering the step by step activities involved with this conversion. In general, a conversion of this magnitude, once you decide to do the migration to your actual go-live date, will take approximately six (6) to twelve (12) weeks, depending on the number of providers per clinic, how many years the clinic has been on the current system, and how many patient records need to be converted.

The first step to converting your data from the existing EMR “source” database to the new Centricity EMR “target” database is to determine what information you want to load into the new EMR. The list could contain any or all of the following data: Patient Demographics, Problems (active and/or inactive), Medications, Allergies, Observations, Documents/Chart Notes, Scanned Images, Vitals, Labs, Immunizations, HPI, Family History, Social History, Surgical History, Results, etc.

The second step is for the clinic to contact the current EMR (or an LCC-recommended source) for the data extraction. This process is sometimes referred to as the “de-conversion of data.” Be sure you get a specific timeline from your current EMR vendor as to how long the extraction process will take. It is important to note that two extractions will be required, the first one for testing and the second for a final conversion. This will allow a minimum amount of down time between migrating from the source database to the target database’s go-live date.

Project Scope: Functionality

The condensed version goes like this: Lost Creek Consulting will run the extracted data through our conversion software, checking for content, completeness, and any customization (modified templates, for example) that may have been done, and will then execute any adjustments that might be necessary. We will then configure your test EMR system to import this data so you can see what it will look like in your new target database. Once you are satisfied with the appearance and accuracy of the conversion, you are ready for the final source data extraction for conversion to the new target database.

Procedurally, LCC will create analysis programs to read the de-converted data files from the source database. We will then produce the following types of files. For scanned images, we will copy the image files to the Centricity Image server structure and create an HL7 file to import a pointer into the patient’s chart. Text notes will be imported into the patient’s chart as a native note. Problems, meds and allergies will be brought into the LCC Imports conversion program, where they can be imported into the patient’s chart through an encounter form from inside the target Centricity EMR.

We will review the first batch of de-converted data, configure LinkLogic and/or SQL server queries on the clinic’s test EMR, import the image and RTF files into the test system and test the conversion program. We will also install the licensed LCC problem, meds and allergies preload encounter forms and programs (if we are converting that data) on the clinic’s target database.

Once all test data has been approved for accuracy, content, location and format, we will retrieve the final extracted data from the source database and perform the final conversion on the clinic’s target database. We will train the appropriate clinic personnel on the use and maintenance of all the tools utilized for this conversion, including LCC’s Cross Reference Editors for meds, labs and/or immunizations as needed, which allows the clinic to map the all the codes from the source EMR codes to the Centricity EMR codes. These are licensed LCC specialty tools that are necessary for meds, labs and imms that do not map automatically. We have frequently found this to be needed since codes from the source EMR do not always map to the codes in the target database.

Project Assumptions: Responsibilities, changes and other conditions

Lost Creek Consulting will provide a detailed proposal for your clinic and assign a project manager to oversee all aspects of the conversion project from start to finish. We will provide all the conversion tools and perform all of the required tasks to complete the engagement to the clinic’s satisfaction.

The clinic will provide the extracted data files from the EMR source database, and will review the test and final data to ensure its completeness through each phase of the project. The clinic will also backup the Centricity EMR server before beginning the conversion and verify the backup by restoring it to another server for testing the application.

Any changes to the project scope, timeline and/or fees will be addressed via the Project Change Control Procedure and will always be approved in writing by both the clinic and Lost Creek Consulting prior to the changes being implemented.

Other Data

Other data can also be migrated from one Centricity database to another. Contact us at info@lostcreekconsulting.com for additional information.

On occasion, a clinic may experience a provider leaving one practice to go to another. In this case, all references to those providers and their patient data needs to be removed from the existing database.

Lost Creek Consulting can perform that “database divorce” for you without disturbing the integrity of the data that is to remain in the existing database. This process is handled in a similar fashion to our data migration processes.

Please contact info@lostcreekconsulting.com for more information on this process.

On those rare occasions when a clinic is converting their Centricity EMR to another EMR, Lost Creek Consulting can extract that data from Centricity so it can be converted to another EMR. We will follow the conversion specifications from the ‘other’ EMR’s conversion team so the data can be as useful to them as it has been in Centricity.

Please contact info@lostcreekconsulting.com for more information on this process.

Lab Interface Installs and Support

Lost Creek Consulting can help you plan for a new a laboratory interface. We custom-build interface kits and cross-reference files. We help organize connectivity to the laboratory. In short, call us to ensure the interface is done well and quickly.