Records Management - Getting Started

In an earlier post, we gave an overview of what records management is all about...the following is a reminder:

1. Accurately and completely document company policies and operations
2. Control the quantity and quality of records produced
   
3. Establish and maintain control with respect to records creation in order to prevent the creation of unnecessary records
   
4. Simplify the activities, systems, and processes of records creation and of records maintenance/use
   
5. Preserve and dispose of records in accordance with industry regulations
   
6. Direct continuing attention to records from their initial creation to their final disposition
7. Creates a chain of custody for handling confidential documents, assuring records are in the right hands at all times
8. Builds accountability throughout any organization by specifying record-handlers and the flow of records by those handlers
9. Systematic approach helps keep current with governing regulatory laws
10. Systematic approach allows for timely and accurate destruction of documents, which reduces time and storage costs

So, now that we know what records management is, it's time to start implementing your own records management policy/system (if not already done).  Here are some basic steps to getting started:

• Identify record types

• Financial
• Medical charts (for medical practices)
• type of medicine
• surgical
• pediatrics
•  Operational records
• employee contracts
• Identify retention for each record type
• Identify which records will need access and how often
• This will help determine whether to send to off site storage 

“Organizations without retention programs can often remove from higher-cost offices areas as much as 55% of records being kept there--as either obsolete (to be destroyed immediately) or inactive (must be retained but may be transferred to a low-cost records center ” (Robert Allerding, CRM, FAI, records management consultant).  

•  Identify personnel or "record-handlers" that should have access to each record type
• Create official company policy with specifications, rules and system in writing
• Creates accountability, maintains confidentiality and minimizes litigation 
• Partner with a records management company to better understand needs
• Sometimes it takes an expert to give insight and assist in an ideal solution
• Sometimes it makes sense to move inactive records off site, sometimes it doesn't
• Consider record volume and space it will take up