Q: What is the recommendation for retaining hard copies of medical records once they have been transferred to an EMR system?
A: This varies quite a bit depending on your storage capabilities and state retention laws. I am aware of some organizations that keep these records for 3?6 years (until the statute of limitations has run out), but this is a very conservative approach. I have also seen six months and one month. I would suggest ensuring you have a rigorous scanning quality control process to reassure yourself that you in fact have the scanned documents and they are readable. I would recommend that you keep the hard copies for at least one month after scanning. You might also want to consult legal counsel on this matter.
Editor's note: Simons, director of health information and privacy officer at Maine General Medical Center in Augusta, answered these questions. She is also a HIM Briefings advisory board member. This information does not constitute legal advice. Consult legal counsel for answers to specific privacy and security questions. Send your questions related to HIPAA compliance to Editor Jaclyn Fitzgerald at jfitzgerald@hcpro.com.
As we embark on our 30th year of delivering you the latest in HIM, we would like to invite you to celebrate the HIM profession with us. Each month this year, HIM Briefings (formerly Medical Records Briefing) will include a special feature that highlights the changes to our publication and the HIM profession over the years.
HIM Briefings (formerly Medical Records Briefing) asked HIM and release of information (ROI) professionals about their ROI practices for its first quarterly benchmarking survey of 2016. (The survey was completed in October 2015.) We introduced several new questions this year about the medical record itself as well as ROI practices.
Compliance with the 2-midnight rule can be tricky for many organizations, which has left many case managers with nagging questions about how to get it right. We got the following questions from our readers and asked two of our experts to weigh in.
If you've been working in case management, you already know that your job has gotten a lot more complicated in recent years. The tasks at hand may even be more daunting if you're a department director who is responsible for complying with a host of different mandates that continue to grow by the day.
A new proposed rule aimed at reducing readmission rates and improving patient care could bring big changes for case management?in some instances requiring hospitals to nearly double the number of full-time case managers they have on staff, say experts.
