Question

You work for a 575 bed Acute Center level 1 Research Trauma Center. The hospital is also a teaching hospital connected to a university. The medical center brings in many millions of dollars in grants each year. The facilities maternity ward delivers the most babies in the city. They have an active heart surgery center. There are six months of data in the new EHR. There are two years worth of paper on the shelf. The two years of records includes the contents of the EHR, since the administration does not trust that EHR administration yet. All older records are maintained on microfilm. You have just ran out of storage space. Because of this you have been asked to evaluate the current retention policy, which is to retain records forever.

1. Identify the factors that the minimum retention policy should be based on.

2. Determine the statute of limitations for your state.

3. Recommend the length of time that the health records should be kept. Justify your recommendation.

4. Specify the method of destruction that you recommend for the paper and electronic data.

5. Recommend whether you would perform the destruction in-house or outsource it. Justify your recommendation.

6.Explain Certificate of Destruction.

Answer 1

1.The minimum retention policy is based on some of the factors that involve in keeping the record in an organization. The common factors are content of the information, need of the organization such as research, auditing, legal cases, tax and financial purposes, health insurance and local, state, federal and international rules and regulations.

2. The hospital must keep the record for at least 10 years following discharge of patient. If it incase of legal issues, the record can be kept for 15 years following discharge. The mental health records can be kept for 20 years. If mentally affected died, the records will be kept for 8 years after death. It is same for all died patient. Minor health records are kept for 1 to 10 years is depend upon age and legal cases and mostly maintained until 25 th birthday. Out patient record can be kept for 7 years after discharge.

3. The length of time that records should be kept in hospital is based on age, legal, education purposes, and considers state, local, federal laws. According to the factors the records should be kept, because if the organization does not consider these factors, they have face many pressure outside. Organization should take precaution measure in order to avoid legal problems. For the minor, the health records can be kept for 10 years, in order to protect the physician and provide continuity of care. If it case health insurance, the retention of records may be helpful

4. The office should record method of destruction, time of destruction, person who destroyed it and signature from witnessed and supervised people. The paper records are destroyed in the methods of burning, grinding, crushing and shredding for paper records. The computer data is destroyed with magnetic degaussing. The micro film and laser film are destroyed in the methods of grinding. DVD is destroyed with shredding. The records which destroyed should not dispose to garbage. It should be kept in a safe place and locking system.

5. the records should be disposed either in house or outside. The truck comes to organization and takes and loaded into bin the medical records to offsite and destroys it. Whereas mobile truck destroy in front of person in on-site facility. Off site destruction methods costs more than onsite destruction methods . In onsite destruction, mobile truck person destroys records in front of person. In offsite facility, mobile truck will not be there fully. some organization donot have enough space for destrcution. for them, the destrcution methods can be taken off site methods of destrcution.

6. certification of destruction explain when what , how the destruction have take place. The serial number is allocated to the destruction methods. Signature of witness . it has acceptance of responsibility of keeping information safe and confidential. It also contains terms, policies of the company and company for methods of destrcution. it has date and time, place, methods , siganture of person, content (paper and electronic, film)