How Long Do Medical Record Need To Be Retained?

There are a lot of documents that we don’t need to keep, but when it comes to medical records, we need to make sure that these are held on to for a specific amount of time.

In this article, Rads Document Storage take a look at how long you need to keep medical records for, and the best way to do this.

What are medical records?

Medical records can cover a wide number of things. Not only does this include medical notes, but it can also refer to x-rays, test results, MRI scans, prescriptions, equipment logs, meeting minutes and financial reports.

Once these documents have served their initial purpose, they will become the medical records of a patient and need to be held onto in case they are needed in the future.

Why do medical records need to be kept?

By law, medical records made by the NHS in the UK need to be kept for at least 12 years, and this will also apply to any private healthcare providers who use medical records.

In addition to this, there are also NHS policies which state that certain medical records must be kept until particular milestones are reached, such as an 18th birthday. In the case of dental records, these need to be kept for even longer, and so need to be held onto for a minimum of 30 years.

Medical records also need to be kept for auditing purposes. Whether a workplace is audited for financial reasons, health and safety concerns or as part of a performance review, it is important to make sure that you are able to provide all financial and logistical records, including delivery receipts and stock logs.

In this case, any NHS records will need to have been kept for three years. This is also the case for NHS records relating to corporate issues such as staff administration documents and payroll logs.

In some cases, medical records might need to be retained for longer than the recommended period. This will usually have been specifically requested and will be due to the long-term treatment of a patient, or because they need to be kept in the public interest, and this will be decided by the courts.

Storing medical records

When you consider how long medical records need to be stored for, it becomes evident that there is a lot of paperwork involved, and so finding somewhere to keep it all is not always easy. This is why it is now important to make use of secure document storage services that can keep all medical records safely secure and organised.

These services allow GPs surgeries, hospitals, dentists and other medical professionals to organise, scan, digitise or even destroy medical documents in a controlled area. These spaces are all designed to meet some very high standards so that all sensitive information is kept safe and ensures that documents are still easily accessible when they are needed.

This means that medical settings can not only free up some much-needed space, but they can still be in a position to deliver the best patient care and stay compliant with the necessary laws.

Medical records can be very sensitive documents, so it is important that they are stored safely and correctly, no matter how long they need to be retained for.

By making use of professional medical document storage solutions, you can make sure that your medical records are not only kept in a secure environment, but you can also ensure that they are all well organised and are still easy to access at any point when they might still be needed.