1. Your organization keeps paper records for ten years, and you are purging records for destruction. What concern do you have with staff pulling records strictly based on the ten-year indicator?
Primarily, every facility should have a detailed policy and procedure manual for destruction of personal health information (PHI). If it is the policy to destroy records that are ten years and older, when selecting records to be destroyed they need to pass through legal holds check. Organizations who do not operate under their destruction policies uniformly or where destruction happens conflicting the policy, a court may permit a jury to assume a negligence suit against the facility. Whereas, if the record were accessible, it would have revealed that …show more content…
3. There has been debate in your HIM Department about how long fetal monitoring strips must be retained. They are considered part of the mother's health record. What is your recommendation?
In following professional practice guidelines, I would suggest following AHIMA’s retention standards. For fetal heart monitoring record, AHIMA recommends keeping the records for “10 years after the infant reaches the age of majority” (Brodnik, Rinehart-Thompson, & Reynolds, 2012).
4. You have taken a new job at a tertiary care facility after working in a small community hospital. At your previous employment, records were retained for 15 years and then destroyed. At this new facility, records are maintained permanently. What inference can you draw from this difference in procedure?
Unfortunately, there is no solitary regulated record retention schedule that organizations must follow. Rather, each entity must assess their own situations, based on their size and state, and develop their own policies and procedures. For a small community hospital, I would assume the records are kept permanently for several reasons. Some of those reasons would include legal liability protection and limited financial means to contract or employee persons for the destruction of