Reference no: EM132925986

For years healthcare organizations have struggled to define their legal health records and align them with the designated record set required by the HIPAA privacy rule. Questions often arise about the differences between the two sets because both identify information that must be disclosed upon request.

The expanding scope of health records adds to the challenge of defining and compiling these record sets. An individual's record can consist of a facility's record, outpatient diagnostic test results or therapies, pharmacy records, physician records, other care providers' records, and the patient's own personal health record. Administrative and financial documents and data may be intermingled with clinical data.

In addition, the type of media on which information is recorded is also expanding. Source records may include diagnostic images, video, voice files, and e-mail. The organization must determine which of these data elements, electronic-structured documents, images, audio files, and video files to include.

The emergence of electronic health records (EHRs) also is complicating organizational efforts to define and disclose information. Information in EHRs is often stored in multiple systems, inhibiting the ability to succinctly pull together the record for either the legal health record or the designated record set.

These input systems may include laboratory information, pharmacy information, picture archiving and communications, cardiology information, results reporting, computerized provider order entry, nurse care planning, transcription, document imaging, and fetal trace monitoring systems, as well as a myriad of home-grown or individual clinical department systems.

However, the same criteria that organizations used to determine what paper records to retain and include in their legal health records and designated record sets can be applied to electronic records.

Questions organizations must ask include:

Question 1: What information can be stored long term?

Question 2: What is clinically useful long term?

Question 3: What is the cost of storage?

Question 4: How can the organization effectively and succinctly assemble the EHR for long-term use?