1. Plan (4–8 weeks out)
- Name an internal owner and a clinical champion; align on a realistic go-live date (avoid month-end and your busiest season).
- Sign the BAA and confirm the new vendor's data-migration scope in writing — what they migrate vs. what you export yourself.
- Inventory your current data: patients, active problems/medications/allergies, documents, schedules, open orders, and accounts receivable.
- Pull a clean export from the legacy system (or confirm API/database access) and document field mappings to the new schema.
- Decide your historical-data strategy: full chart migration vs. migrate active patients + read-only archive of the rest.
2. Migrate data
- Migrate structured data first: demographics, insurance/payers, problem list, medications, allergies, immunizations.
- Migrate scheduling so day-one appointments exist; migrate open/active orders and care plans (485s for home health).
- Bring over AR and open claims so billing continuity is preserved — a revenue gap at go-live is the most expensive mistake.
- Attach documents/PDFs to the correct charts; confirm encoding and that nothing is truncated.
- Run the migration into a staging/sandbox tenant first, never straight into production.
3. Validate (before go-live)
- Reconcile record counts: patients in = patients out; medications, allergies, and documents tie to source totals.
- Spot-check 20–30 charts across visit types for fidelity — active meds, allergies, and recent notes especially.
- Verify e-prescribing, eligibility checks, and the clearinghouse connection in the sandbox with test transactions.
- Confirm payer enrollments and EDI (837/835) are active for the new system — these often have lead times.
- For home health: validate OASIS export to iQIES and PDGM grouping on sample episodes.
4. Train & prepare go-live
- Role-based training (providers, nursing, front desk, billing) on real workflows, not a generic demo.
- Write a one-page day-one quick-reference for each role; identify super-users for floor support.
- Plan a parallel period or a clean cutover date; keep the legacy system read-only for a defined window.
- Document a rollback plan and the exact conditions that would trigger it.
5. Go-live & the first billing cycle
- Lighten the schedule for the first 2–3 days; staff extra support hours.
- Submit a small first claim batch and watch acceptance/277CA before scaling up.
- Monitor the first full billing cycle daily: rejections, denials, days-in-AR, and any payer enrollment gaps.
- Hold a 2-week retro; clean up data issues surfaced in real use before closing out the legacy system.
Configuration decisions (any vendor)
Work these in parallel with the migration. Each one has a lead time, and each one blocks go-live if it surfaces late.
- Locations, departments, and place-of-service codes for every site you bill from.
- Provider records: NPI, taxonomy, state licenses, DEA (and EPCS enrollment if you e-prescribe controlled substances).
- Roles and permissions per job function — least privilege, with a named owner for the admin role.
- Templates and note types for your top 10 visit reasons; retire the ones nobody uses.
- Fee schedule, CPT/HCPCS favorites, modifiers, and your self-pay/cash price list.
- Payer list with electronic payer IDs, plus eligibility (270/271) and claims (837/835) enrollment status per payer.
- Clearinghouse connection, submitter ID, and a test claim through to a 277CA acknowledgement.
- Lab and imaging interfaces, e-prescribing (and EPCS token) enrollment, and immunization registry connection.
- Patient portal branding, appointment reminders, and consent/intake forms.
- Home health only: OASIS-E settings, PDGM grouping, EVV vendor/aggregator, and 485 signature routing.
Copergrine handles the migration scope with you — structured data, schedules, documents, and AR — into a sandbox first, with reconciliation before go-live. See the Copergrine EMR or, for agencies, the Home Health & Therapy EMR.