There are multiple reasons why it's important for medical professionals and GP Surgeries to keep long term medical records for their patients, and ensure they are safe, secure and easily accessible at all times.
First, a doctor needs to know their patient. When a patient is faced with a potentially serious illness, knowing details of past health issues can make all the difference to diagnosis and treatment. Factors such as addiction, allergies, and family history can also play a vital part in diagnosis and curation. However small it may seem, you never know when a piece of information may prove invaluable. Doctor's surgeries and even large hospitals only have a limited amount of space to store such materials, of course, not to mention the time required to sift through physical documents trying to find what you need. An off-site warehouse and digital storage service can be the perfect answer to this dilemma.
Doctor-patient confidentiality is hugely important and having a secure way of retaining documents is key to this. Knowing their sensitive information is safe in your care is a key element to keeping the trust of patients, making them more likely to be open and honest about potentially embarrassing health issues they may be experiencing. Retaining medical records in an insecure location risks defeating the entire point of retaining them at all, as they're more likely to be lost and/or find their way into the wrong hands. Though we don't like to think about it, human error can sometimes play a huge part in bad security, whether it's our own or that of a colleague, well-meaning or otherwise.
Keeping one's medical records isn't just for that person's own good, but others as well. Archived records can be vital in tracing a history of family illness, or their details can be important to criminal investigations, even after the patient’s death. Once again, in this case a failure to safely store such records can, at best, reflect badly on a surgery. Furthermore, having a third-party store them digitally has the benefit of impartiality relating to patients. You can rest assured in this case there's much less chance of any favouritism or prejudice being shown to certain patients due to personal experiences with them.
A modern, carefully managed storage solution by way of a third party like CAS benefits medical professionals who care about retaining patient records safely. With advanced security procedures that include environmental controls and fire protection, staff approved by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), and full compliance with the Data Protection Act 2018 (incorporating the GDPR), there's no doubt that your information is securely protected. Please get in touch today to discuss your requirements.
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