Switching to a new Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system is a major step forward for any healthcare provider, but it comes with a big challenge: What do you do with all your legacy paper records and charts?
More and more healthcare organizations are choosing to digitize patient charts before transitioning to a new EMR, ensuring a smoother rollout, improved access to historical data, and better long-term compliance.
In this post, we’ll explore why scanning paper records before an EMR migration is critical to success, and how it helps providers save time, reduce risk, and improve patient care from day one.
The Problem with Paper in a Digital Transition
Despite advances in electronic health records, many healthcare practices still store decades of patient files on paper, often in back offices, closets, or offsite storage.
When preparing for an EMR migration, these paper records can become:
- A bottleneck to implementation
- A risk to data continuity
- A barrier to fast access during care delivery
- A compliance challenge when trying to unify digital and physical records
If those files aren’t digitized before the switch, providers may struggle with dual systems, forcing staff to toggle between paper archives and a new digital interface, slowing down patient care and increasing the chance of errors.
Why Digitize Before an EMR Migration?
1. Ensure Continuity of Care
Digitizing legacy patient charts ensures historical data is available in the new EMR, giving physicians immediate access to prior diagnoses, test results, medications, and treatment notes.
This helps:
- Improve decision-making
- Maintain consistency across providers
- Avoid redundant tests or missed conditions
- Support chronic care management and follow-ups
2. Streamline Your EMR Go-Live
Digitizing before migration allows your team to:
- Centralize all records in one digital ecosystem
- Reduce manual data entry during go-live
- Avoid scanning on-demand during patient visits
- Migrate clean, indexed records into your new system
This reduces launch delays and allows staff to focus on learning the new EMR, rather than juggling paper.
3. Improve Compliance and Data Security
Paper charts are vulnerable to:
- Unauthorized access
- Misfiling or loss
- Fire, water, and pest damage
By digitizing before EMR implementation, you can:
- Encrypt and securely store all records
- Control access via user roles
- Maintain a full audit trail for HIPAA compliance
- Apply proper retention policies for long-term compliance
4. Reduce Administrative Burden on Staff
Switching EMRs is already a heavy lift for your administrative and clinical staff. Without digitized records:
- Teams spend extra time retrieving or scanning paper on demand
- Nurses and MAs juggle between paper files and electronic systems
- Front desk staff struggle to find older patient histories
Digitizing before migration frees your team to focus on training, testing, and patient care, not paperwork.
5. Lower Costs Long-Term
Storing and maintaining paper records is expensive, especially when those files need to be accessed regularly.
Digitizing patient charts helps you:
- Eliminate the need for offsite storage
- Free up valuable in-office space
- Reduce retrieval and labor costs
- Avoid duplicate data entry or redundant scanning
And once digitized, these files are searchable, sharable, and portable, a massive improvement over manual folders.
How to Approach Scanning for EMR Migration
Here’s how to ensure your digitization process supports a successful EMR transition:
Prioritize Active and Recent Patients
Start with the patients you see most often—this reduces the amount of scanning needed before go-live.
Use Metadata and Indexing
Work with your scanning provider to apply searchable tags like name, DOB, and medical record number for easy integration into your EMR.
Integrate with Your EMR Vendor
Confirm that your scanning output matches the data format, folder structure, and import specs of your new EMR system.
Set a Retention Policy
Work with legal/compliance teams to decide what to scan, archive, or shred based on regulatory timelines.
Common EMR Platforms That Support Scanned Charts
Most modern EMRs allow for direct or indirect import of digitized records, including:
- Epic
- Cerner
- Athenahealth
- eClinicalWorks
- Allscripts
- NextGen
- Meditech
- Kareo
A professional scanning partner can structure your digital files for smooth upload into your platform of choice.
An EMR migration is one of the most transformative (and stressful) IT upgrades a healthcare provider can undergo. But when you take the time to digitize patient charts before making the switch, the transition becomes faster, cleaner, and safer for everyone involved.
From improving continuity of care to ensuring HIPAA compliance, digital files are the foundation of a successful EMR rollout.
Let’s talk about preparing your legacy charts for EMR migration →
