Client Examples

Better Use For Space Than Storing Paper Documents

Hospitals and NHS Trusts are required to retain records for up to 25 years and large teaching hospitals may have to keep records for at least 30 years and then pass some of them on to the Public Records Office.

With the constant pressure to expand all types of NHS services, optimum use needs to be made of all available space and more efficient use of health service buildings is generally possible than filling them with archive files.

Anita Thomas is the Health Records and Transport Manager for the West Dorset General Hospitals NHS Trust, based at Dorchester County Hospital. Anita explained some of the issues covering archiving of health service records.

“We utilise a storage area beneath ground level at the hospital, but it is never sufficient to accommodate our total document archive needs. The volume of health service records produced cannot be controlled or predicted in the same way that many organisations are able to and there are a variety of strict regulatory requirements governing the periods that different types of health service records must be kept for. These include the Data Protection Act, Health Service Circulars, Audit Commission and Clinical Negligence Insurance Schemes”.

“Not only do we need to have an efficient and cost effective storage system, but it is vital that we have a fast method to identify, trace and retrieve specific documents without delay. We have determined a carefully considered and well structured policy to differentiate which groups of documents to archive ‘in house’ and which to consign to external, third party, archive storage”.

“Live records are retained at the hospital in our own archive for five years and are then backed-up by scanning into our electronic document management system. What we describe as ‘ancient’ records are then identified ready for despatch to our external archive contractor”.

“Use of an external archive contractor is a decision we took only 18 months ago, after very careful planning and assessment of a number of professional archive companies. Paramount to our requirements are the highest standards of security, confidentiality and efficiency”.

“MSR Eurostore Limited won the tender because of their complete ability to collect, sort, re-box, manage a computerised index of our documents and meet our other exacting service level standards. Their fast retrieval of individual documents and value for money, were exceptional. We found that some contractors do not offer all of these services and simply store complete boxes of documents and return full boxes upon request”.

"The National Programme for IT - Connecting For Health - may help with a plan for electronic document management for the Southern Region some time in the future, but currently there is no regional or national approach".