Scanning Medical Records – tackling the paper mountain
I spotted this article in a news site talking about Electronic Health Records (EHR) and paper medical records and it prompted me to think about some of the work we have been doing with the NHS in the UK.
We have been designing EHR scanning and archiving systems for the last couple of years and the approach I have been helping NHS hospitals to embrace is simple. First we define 3 categories of records:
- Active – used in the last 2 years
- Dormant – used between 2 & 7 years
- Inactive – not accessed for over 7 years
The Inactive records are sent off-site to a secure physical storage facility and a place holder is scanned into the records system (or ECM solution depending on how the Trusts systems work) that can be used to retrieve the records. These records are highly unlikely to be recalled and are simply riding out their storage time frames.
For some hospitals it is worth scanning these Inactive records over time and I have negotiated discounted rates with back scan suppliers where they can schedule these records into their own down time over a fixed period of time.
The Dormant records are moved into on-site managed storage and are scanned either as they are requested or as they are returned depending on time constraints. This slowly ensures that the records are moving to electronic formats and targets the most active records.
The Active records are scanned immediately in bulk by a specialist back scan supplier. This is the expensive bit but it can be mitigated through prioritisation and even skipped entirely if the scanning can be handled in-house by a dedicated team.
The boundaries for the time-lines are changed depending on the scale of the medical records library and the type of patient records being held. Budget can also be taken into consideration to ensure the scale of the initial back scan operation fits within realistic budgeting rounds.
BUT the above approach can result in all the benefits of EHR being accrued much more quickly with savings being possible within 2 years or less allowing the purchase of systems to move forward much faster.
Of course the US appears to have it easy compared to the UK with their retention guidelines. Certain records in the UK have 35 year retention policies and for certain institutions they need to be preserved indefinitely! In one location we worked with they have consistent records dating back to 1865! Now that is a back scan operation that could take a long time if tackled head on!
If you are tackling one of these projects then we wish you good luck in your journey! Or you could give us a call and we can help you speed through it stress free!