How to Resuscitate Your Failing Hospital Records Management

Badly managed hospital records can cause a bevy of problems, including mixed up patient medical records, bad scheduling and even malpractice. Needless to say, if your hospital record management efforts are failing, then you need to act right now to fix it. Fortunately, it is possible to resuscitate your failing hospital records management system. Here is how to do it: 

Break everything down into multiple categories

Your records can quickly get out of whack if they aren't identified separately. This is due to the fact that they are all crammed into the same file, with little more than vague alphabetization to set them apart. You can significantly simplify your records by breaking them down into categories. Here is an example of how you could break things down:

• Medical records
• Administrative records
• Working files
• Reference materials

This is just one example of how you could break your hospital records into categories.

Don't hold onto anything longer than you have to

A huge pile of paperwork will overwhelm anybody. If you are keeping records longer than you need to, then you are making your hospital's pile bigger than it has to be.You need to figure out what records your hospital doesn't need and get rid of them. This doesn't have to be a daily practice. Usually, all you need to do is audit and clean up your hospital's records once or twice per year.

Designate single people to manage each type of file

Having everyone managing your records at once can cause several problems, including: 

• Redundancy
• Document mix-ups
• Lost documents

Instead, designate a single person to be in charge of managing a file so you can make sure that there is no redundancy, confusion or loss.

Train your entire team to properly manage records

Managing records is often overlooked as something that you need to teach people to do. However, even if every employee at your hospital is skilled at managing records, it won't help you very much if they aren't engaging in best practices that keep everything in sync. Out of sync filing efforts alone can cause your hospital records management endeavors to fail.As such, it is critical that you hold training sessions wherein you show them how to manage records according to your hospital's best practices.

Use all of the technological capabilities that are available to you

Ignoring the technological resources available to assist your records management endeavors is the biggest records management mistake that you can make. Technology can completely transform your ability to manage records. Here is how:

Convert your paper documents to digital files

Digital files are much easier to manage than paper documents, because you don't have to sift through giant folders to find things, and your physical space will never be overwhelmed with too much documentation.

Integrate records management software into your hospital's computer system

In order to get the most out of your newly digitized hospital records, you need to use a records management software solution. This allows you to easily organize your digital files and find them with the ease of a simple search.

Create a system to immediately convert future documents to digital files

Your hospital is churning new documents every day around the clock; if your future documentation were only paper than it would defeat the purpose of the last two steps. Invest in a high volume scanning solution to convert incoming records.

You can save your hospital records management

No matter how poorly managed your hospital's records are right now, you can fix it. Taking the steps discussed in this blog will help you get things back on track.