Executive Medical Director, Provation
When health systems talk about “modernizing IT,” the focus often gravitates toward architecture, interoperability, and getting everything “under one roof” in the EHR. But decisions to migrate away from a purpose-built clinical documentation platform carry strategic risks that go far beyond technology.
Documentation isn’t a generic workflow problem. It’s where clinical quality, regulatory compliance, and revenue integrity all intersect. When specialized workflows are forced into generic templates, the downstream impact can show up as:
- Slower documentation and higher clinician frustration
- Incomplete or inconsistent capture of key clinical details
- Gaps that affect coding, denials, and ultimately margins
In a sponsored article published by Healthcare IT Today, Provation Executive Medical Director Lukasz Kowalczyk, MD, explores these often-overlooked risks of migrating away from a purpose-built clinical documentation platform—and what leaders should be thinking about before making a change.
What’s at Stake for Health Systems
From the outside, consolidating documentation into a single system can sound efficient. But the real costs of IT change frequently emerge later, in areas such as:
- Clinical Productivity:
Extra clicks, rigid templates, and non-intuitive workflows can slow clinicians down and make it harder to capture the nuances of complex procedures. - Data Quality & Insights:
When structured fields give way to more free-text documentation, it becomes harder to surface reliable, reportable data for quality programs, compliance, research, and operational decision-making. - Revenue & Risk Exposure:
Small documentation gaps can lead to missed charges, denials, or increased audit risk—especially in high-volume, high-complexity service lines like GI and the procedural suite. - Image Fragmentation:
Shifting clinical image capture or image management to third-party tools introduces workflow disconnects and increases the risk of missed, misplaced, or improperly labeled images—issues that can compromise both clinical quality and downstream documentation. - Organizational Reputation Risk:
When documentation quality declines, organizations risk eroding trust with referring providers, accreditation bodies, and patients—creating reputational vulnerabilities that can have long-term consequences.
The article highlights why these “hidden costs” deserve as much attention as licensing, hosting, or integration line items when leaders evaluate whether to replace a purpose-built platform.
Why Purpose-Built Documentation Still Matters
Purpose-built clinical documentation tools are designed around:
- Deep, specialty-specific workflows
- Integrated image management
- Rich, structured data capture at the point of care
- Configurable templates that adapt as guidelines and coding change
For many organizations, these capabilities are essential to maintaining both clinical quality and financial performance as the regulatory and reimbursement landscape continues to evolve.
In the Healthcare IT Today piece, Dr. Kowalczyk explores how health systems can weigh these considerations against broader IT modernization goals, and why the “simplest” path on paper may not be the most strategic path in practice.
Read the Full Sponsored Article
To dive deeper into the strategic risks and hidden costs associated with migrating away from a purpose-built clinical documentation platform, read the full article on Healthcare IT Today:
(This article is sponsored by Provation and published on Healthcare IT Today.)