What do I do with all this paper?

Author: Marc Grossman

One of the benefits of switching to a concierge practice is that even if you do not implement an EMR (Electronic Medical Record) you will only have a tenth of the number of charts you used to have to manage. However, as much as you may want to, regulators will not just let you incinerate the other 90%.

The simplest way to handle the problem is the way it has always been done. When a patient requests their medical records, they can be copied on an individual basis. Once the flood of record requests surrounding the transition has passed, all the boxes can be sent to off-site storage. However, this will incur 7 years of rental charges and most likely a large headache on the occasions where you actually need to have access to one of the archived records. And at the end of the archive period, they still need to be destroyed. The other approach is having the records scanned. This will require a lot more upfront work but once it is done, it is done. If all records are scanned, when a patient requests their records during the transition, you hand them the original. Instead of having to store a roomful of boxes, you have a handful of DVD’s, one copy of which you can keep in the office for easy access and another is an off-site location. The interesting fact about these two approaches is that over the seven year period, GSC has found they are comparably priced is many cases. While this, like most decisions in the transition process need to be applied to your particular situation, the right path taken in an expeditious manner can make the transition process go a whole lot smoother.