The Future for Electronic Medical Record Archiving

By KW Norris  | 

In my article (Ten Reasons To Archive Patient Medical Records) I discussed the ten most important considerations for creating an electronic Patient Data Archive. In this article I will discuss the future of information archives and why now is a good time to get started.

Currently less than 10% of all businesses create an archive for some or all of their mission critical information. By the year 2019, that will increase to 75%. Two of the key forces expected to drive this rapid growth are the need for enhanced compliance and the ease of electronic access.

Patient Medical information, while vital for medical clinics, is only a small part of all business information. Yet for those who are dedicated to the practice of medicine, it is virtually the only consideration for archiving.

In addition to dramatic this increase, the future of data archiving will include email and patient internet correspondence. This will likely become a legal requirement especially for pediatric clinics, and geriatric clinics with patients who are not able to manage their own affairs. The advocates (guarantor) for these patients necessarily create more points of communication than individuals who manage their own health care therefore increasing the need for better control, easier search access and duplicated backup storage.

Sorting through this additional information in search of specific notes, will become problematic if for no other reason than sheer volume. It will also require correlation of data, that is, matching a request with all, and only, the information related to a request. Failing to provide all associated information can lead to an inaccurate health diagnosis and/or a legal issue. Providing unrelated information will be confusing at least.

Begin now. Recover the data you have and get it loaded into an archive. Basic archive requirements must include: ease of access, a standalone uncomplicated database format, a database that is maintained separately from the primary patient database. The query program needs to be simple, straight forward and intuitive to learn.

Further, specifications for data archiving best practices must include a "read only" restriction where changes in the data are prevented programmatically. All data including any changes to the data need to be entered into the "system of record" which is usually the EMR System, and its rigorous edit criteria. Maintaining a single system of record preserves the integrity of the patient data. Audits of the archive database will then satisfy the requirement that its data cannot be compromised.

The cost to implement a data archive is relatively low.

Security concerns and other problems regarding lost and unrecoverable data will be reduced via the archive's separate, protected database. As the patient data "system of record", the primary EMR database is, and should be, the workhorse for validating, storing, updating and retrieving electronic patient records.

The future is now.

You can remove Data Archiving from the list of future concerns and eliminate the crisis which will occur when data archiving becomes a government, industry or business mandate.

KW Norris is an IT professional, consultant and Sales Executive. KW works with medical clinics and medical software vendors to provide the best technology solutions available to improve quality and efficiency in the medical office. If you need a technology solution, KW can help you find it.

KW Norris
Technology Consultants, Inc.
4125 SW 185th Avenue, Beaverton, OR 97078
503-939-9223 cell phone
kw@tech-consultants.com
http://www.tcimovesdata.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kwnorris

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/KW_Norris/487311