The standards and requirements for the retention and destruction of health records are Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s most overlooked aspect. Each facility has its own policy concerning this practice, and these laws regarding the retention and destruction of records vary across states (Peden, 2017). A failure for healthcare organizations to implement proper information puts them at a tremendous legal risk. The facility’s health information management department should retain these records for a specified period. The lack of consistency in these laws and regulations regarding these two matters affects my institution in a number of ways.
One of these ways is that my facility is unable to formulate a standard policy regarding this issue. Since there is no agreement between these two states’ policies, the hospital cannot delete the information until the longer period has lapsed. In this case, the destruction policies may not be as clear as expected (Tavakoli & Jahanbakhsh, 2016). Therefore, the facility may find it challenging to acquire the other institution until their retention period has expired.
The second issue is that the deletion to the organization’s records may be termed as the destruction of evidence. In such a circumstance, the court may find it guilty of destruction of evidence in an attempt to favor one party in a malpractice lawsuit (Tavakoli & Jahanbakhsh, 2016). As such, the facility can only destroy the records which do not have any pending litigation in liaison with the courts. Otherwise, the court will have to preserve the evidence before the destruction of those records.
To deal with this issue, I would first constitute a steering committee to formulate retention and destruction of records. The second step of this team would be to check state-specific laws and regulations on these two matters. An alignment of the facility’s policy and the state’s would be vital steps towards dealing with this situation.
In conclusion, the destruction or retention of health records may expose the facility to significant legal and ethical risks. The guidelines for destroying or retaining these records differ across jurisdictions, and state-specific consultation is required in this matter. Spoliation of this information by a facility may be presumed as destroying evidence of any pending litigation against the facility’s medical malpractice. Therefore, the lack of a consistent set of laws and regulations on these two matters can affect health institutions in many ways.
References
Peden, A. (2017). Comparative health information management. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Tavakoli, N., & Jahanbakhsh, M. (2016). Investigation of retention and destruction process of medical records in the hospitals and codifying appropriate guidelines. Journal of Education and Health Promotion, 2(1), 17.