I have been googling away trying to find out from where this phrase originated. Most sites tell me that it was born in the 1800's and it means "someone or something that does not fit in or belong."

I prefer a story I heard. It has to do with shipbuilding in the 8^th century. The water-faring cultures, like the Vikings, built their ships out of wood and fastened them together with wooden pegs. They actually made the holes that those pegs fit into SQUARE and the pegs themselves were ROUND. They would fashion the peg, drill the hole, hammer in the peg, and then when it got wet, the peg would swell to fill the hole. Now, this was not a perfect seal of course, so the builders used pitch and wool and other materials to coat the seams and the peg holes so as to provide further waterproofing. I am not a biblical scholar, but I do know that God told Noah to build his ark of cypress. I wonder if he, too, used this method of fastening the boards?

Of course, today, shipbuilding methods have vastly improved. Planks and wooden pegs have been replaced by manufactured steel and rivets and the like, producing not only better ships, but less leaky ones as well.

That is like our LegacySuite solution. When you compare other solutions that take data out of a retired system, most of those are SQUARE holes into which you have to fit the ROUND PEGS of your data. Then you pour a little water on it and hope that it swells to fill the gaps.

Not LegacySuite. The database is based purely on the data that is coming in from the retired system. 12 tables, all keyed by a serialized ID? No problem. In LegacySuite, you will have 12 tables, all keyed by a serialized ID. Patient accounting data that also had some tables capturing clinical data? Not a problem. Our toolset makes this possible. Wait -- is your retired system a surgical system? ERP? HR? We don’t limit the database to a predefined set of fields or tables. The hull of OUR ship is made entirely of steel that is custom fit to your data.

The best part is, even though that hull looks different for every "ship" we build, they are all 100% seaworthy. Our screen builder allows us to quickly and efficiently build a web application with screens and functions customized to your database. We can model those screens after the retiring system, the new system, or anything that best suits the business or clinical need. Furthermore, we can do this with very little time on the part of the hospitals staff. We can go from a basic hull to a ready-to-sail, full-service cruise liner in a matter of weeks.

So while the origins of square pegs and round holes may be a bit vague, the message is clear. It is essential that the data storage and access solution utilized by a healthcare enterprise be built with the latest technologies and is able to weather the most severe of regulatory storms without fear of taking on water. It needs to not provide merely one single boat, but an entire fleet of battle-ready ships that can navigate the rough waters of RAC audits, collections activities, clinical research, and compliance for all types of data.