Are you planning on retiring or transitioning anytime in the next five years? Do you have a 10 year protected health information (PHI) records retention and destruction plan? If you plan to retire, do you have a buyer that plans to purchase the practice management software and digital patient records from you? If you answered no to this last question, you’ll have some work to do in order to maintain your digital patient records (most commonly in your practice management software) over the course of the next 10 years.
Storing digital patient records in a safe, secure and clean location upon retirement can be tough. Making sure you can access this information for the next 10 years in a usable format (when you need it most) can be downright frightening if you don’t have the resources to help. Too many retiring dentists store their old servers in basements, rooms in their homes and other storage type locations.
Storing your information this way can put you in a risky situation. If a dentist fails to retain patient records for the required 10-year period it could subject a dentist to penalties and fines, the loss of legal rights or at a disadvantage in litigation.
A great new way to store and retain your PHI upon retirement is by inventorying your software, license and systems information in an encrypted cloud solution like DDS Safe R2. By storing a copy of your PHI and systems data in the encrypted cloud, you’ll always have a separate copy of your PHI and systems information even if your old server and practice management software become unusable in the future.
With a retention system with DDS Safe R2, you’ll be able to restore and access a working version of your practice management software and PHI when you need it most.
