Your Complete Guide To Scanning Patient Records
DataScan’s Guide for GP’s & Clinics— Part 1
What do you need to know?
As you move toward a paper-free surgery, you will need to answer a few questions about what to do with your existing paper files and how to do it.
- Should you scan your Patient Files?
- Should you scan everything in each file, or should you weed out Documents?
- Should you employ someone to do the scanning in house or have a scanning bureau do it?
- Will you be able to use the files with your Practice Management Software?
The following series of blog posts will seek to answer each of those questions.
DataScan are experts in this field.
The information provided in this series will enable you to successfully run a paper-free surgery. Let’s get started!
Data Protection
Remember before you start, you will need to make yourself aware of the legal and regulatory requirements regarding the Data Protection of your Patient files and the minimum retention periods relating to these.
Charts should be kept a minimum of eight years after a patient’s last visit and there are different regulations relating to Children and Medico-Legal files.
Your choice now is to either digitise the patient files or store the paper files as they are. Storing paper files can either be done on your own premises or at a Records Management Centre.
Tempting though it might be, the storage of old patient files in Garages or Basements is not advisable, neither place is secure enough or weather-proof. You really need to ensure that the records in your custody are protected from Fire, Flood and Theft.
So as we can see, Data Protection is one of the key features of Electronic Medical Records. To find out the rest continue to part 2!
This is part 1 of a 3 part series, continue reading:
Want to talk to us about Medical File Scanning and get get your FREE trial? — call us on 01–8068461
Or visit datascan.ie for more details.
