Teresa,

Assuming that she does a quality scanning and indexing job there shouldn't
be any legal impediment to converting her records to an electronic format.
The only issue I would bring to her attention concerns the ability to
dispose of her records at the legally appropriate time. Since you cannot
selectively destroy records on a CD-R you would have to keep all the records
on a single CD for the entire duration of the six year retention period even
if some of the records are eligible for destruction at the end of this year.


In other words if she has closed files from 2002 she would be able to
destroy them at the end of 2008 - but if she had files from 2007 on the same
CD she would have to keep that entire CD around until the 2007 files were
ready for destruction in 2013. Thus, for the 2002 records, instead of a 6
year retention they would effectively be kept for eleven years. The simple
way to avoid this problem is to put only files for a single year on a CD so
that the entire year can be destroyed at the proper time. This will probably
mean that she has a few more CDs than she would have if she used the entire
capacity of each disc - but it will still be a lot less than the paper and
she will have retained her records in such a way to allow her to mitigate
her potential future risk by disposing of her records at the proper time.

Gregg M Long JD, CRM
MML Enterprises, Inc.
423-316-5554
[log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Werner, Teresa
Sent: Monday, June 02, 2008 6:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Closed Electronic Medical Records - OK?


Is there any reason to keep medical records in hard copy form rather
then electronic if they are all closed?

A friend of mine practice oriental medicine and must keep medical
records for 6 years.  She is leaving the country (for good) and it would
be a whole lot cheaper for her to carry/store a few CDs rather then 6-7
banker boxes.

Any thoughts?

Teresa Werner,
RIM Consultant
775-338-1342

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