Free «Digi-Care Community Hospital Records and Archive Management Policy» Essay Sample

Primary Policy Aims

The purpose of this policy is to provide guidance on the establishment and continuous maintenance of past, current, and future records of Digi-Care Hospital. The records and archives management committee will be constituted and given the role of overseeing this task. The committee will develop a record keeping framework that will be the basis of future record and archiving programs. Digital preservation system will serve the hospital with:

a) Fulfilling the Department of Health standards of practice in order to assure the authenticity, reliability and durability of hospital records (Weisinger, 2011).

b) Establishing a current record management framework.

c) Creating a culture of record accountability within the hospital staff.

d) Providing periodic schedules for retention and disposal of hospital records as well as forming of long-term record archives.

Risk Assessment

The hospital is at a relatively high risk because of the current dilapidated storage files for its records. Storing all the files in one room increases the process of wear and tear and also makes it extremely hard to retrieve records (Read & Ginn, 2015). The institution stores some records in compact disks with haphazard labeling on the data they store.

Needs Statement

Maintaining a patient record system is very important not only for the hospital but also for the provision of accurate statistics of the community’s population (Srinivasan, 2008). Therefore, it should develop a records appraisal framework. Consequently, a modern archiving information system should be designed and deployed within the hospital. All records in files and compact disks should be extracted and stored in the record keeping system.

Project Statement

1. Patient Register. It will preserve patient health records in order to assure accuracy of future references about a patient’s health history. The register will consist of a patient register, alphabetically arranged in order of patient surnames, in-patient registration, clinical procedures and out-patient clearance records.
2. X-ray films and X-ray reports Record. It is a permanent solution for the preservation of X-ray films in order to assure the durability and accessibility of patient’s X-ray records.
3. Hospital Financial Records. It is a financial records program that will encourage a culture of financial accountability within the hospital staff. The records will include yearly financial records, budget allocations, drugs procurement records, pharmacy department annual drug sales and profits, government tax records.
4. Hospital Administrative Records. It is a durable solution of monitoring the management of administrative records, policies and major activities in order to keep track of the hospital’s development policies pace.

Goals and Objectives

a) To develop a long-term and modern record keeping system. (Cox, 2009)

b) To create a culture of records accountability within the hospital staff.

Projects to Undertake

A records and archive management committee should suggest the guidelines on creation, retention, appraisal and disposal of hospital records within six months of commencing work.

Organizational Commitments

The resources, needed to establish an alignment of the hospital’s resources with the records and archives management project, include: time and room for the administration’s meeting in order to discuss the project, appoint offices for the records and archives management committee and estimate the budget for the records and archives system establishing. 

Financial Commitments

The financial commitments the hospital will have to meet are as follows:

• Hiring a consultant from the Department of Health to assure the quality of the appraisal process.
• Upgrading the hospital’s information systems to accommodate a record keeping module.

Personnel

The committee will include the following personnel:

• A record custodian.
• Two representatives from the finance department.
• Two representatives from the health information department.
• One representative from the admission services and registration department.
• One representative from the medical staff department.

Additionally, the following hospital staff will assist the committee with the appraisal process:

• Hospital’s Chief Accountant: Reviewing and confirmation of the accuracy of past financial records.
• Hospital’s Chief Secretary: Reviewing the hospital’s administrative records.
• Chief Medical Officer: Reviewing patient’s health records.

Preservation & Quality Control

The records committee is tasked with assuring the quality of records. The following guidelines can be used to ensure quality:

• Destruction of records considered obsolete.
• Archiving sections of old records.
• Annual review of archiving schedules.
• Periodic upgrading of the records module in the hospital information system.

Preservation Metadata

There will be the enforcement of Department of Health records and archiving standards to ensure there is modern preservation metadata suitable for the hospital’s current records.

Roles & Responsibilities

The Committee for Records and Archive management will be in charge of:

• Sorting the data records to be stored.
• Feeding the records system with records.
• Retrieving records from the records system.
• Authorization of records destruction.
• Determining retention periods.

Training/Education

The committee will be required to design an effective training program for all hospital staff. The program will educate hospital staff on the need for accuracy of data being entered into hospital systems for the sake of accurate records.

Evaluation and Updating

The records and archiving policy will be evaluated and updated on an annual basis following its launch.