Medical Record Management Challenges in the Healthcare Industry

Businesses in Healthcare industry meet stringent regulations and compliances when it comes to protecting patient privacy, maintaining physical records, and stay clear of any medical errors. Institutional regulatory bodies mandate businesses in healthcare industry to follow comprehensive record maintenance as part of their annual compliance. While focusing on providing quality healthcare at optimal costs, businesses have to be responsible and mindful about medical records throughout the lifecycle from creation, storage, continued maintenance and secure disposal. Public Health is a State Subject! In India we have multiple, Central and State-level regulatory authorities that govern the way public health is taken care of. The requirements differ for businesses across Hospitals, Pharmaceutical organizations, Life-Sciences, and allied services sector. Often, it is unclear and difficult to keep up with changing regulations by multiple bodies. Tamilnadu Clinical Establishment (Regulations) Rules 2018 mandates healthcare players to maintain 10 Years of Physical Records! This holds good for Medical, clinical, non-clinical, medico-legal records, registers and all forms of physical records pertaining to in-patient, out-patient, employees. That’s a Lot! Medical establishments cannot afford to allocate office spaces for storing medical records, hire dedicated resources in the daunting storage, maintenance and timely retrieval. At the same time, not adhering to multiple record-keeping compliances could disrupt their business processes, deviate their attention from providing care to tackle operational issues and even affect business continuity itself. Medical Records Storage and Maintenance In healthcare industry, Records come in different formats. Records, registers, charts, X-ray films, pathology slides, non-clinical records, films and electronic data back-up drives. Storing them systematically and locating them whenever needed is a big problem by itself. Digitization of Medical Records For transforming physical medical records into easily searchable files over internet, integrated electronic records management (EMR) solutions are available. The digitization involves industry-grade scanning and OCR scanning so that even Images can be converted into readily searchable texts. Shredding Medical Records Maintaining a track record of creation, retention and disposal schedule of physical records over multiple years is a full-time responsibility by itself for many. Records contain sensitive personal information (SPI) and personal health information (PHI) cannot be simply dumped. They need to be securely disposed. Healthcare Businesses turn to take professional record management assistance from reliable 3rd party document storage companies who offer safe storage, record management, document shredding services.