JessBojan
Contributor
Hello, I work for a reproductive medicine/infertility clinic, my office is currently filled with boxes of our 'encounter sheets'. I am trying to figure out if these all need to be scanned into our server before shredding or if they are even needed for the medical record. When patients come in, the nurses/doctors use an encounter sheet to mark off what labs/ultrasounds/etc. were performed, I then use these to verify services based on what's documented in our EHR (lab results, ultrasound images/notes, office visit notes, etc.) and then enter the appropriate charges into our billing software. If all of the labs and services are already in the patient's chart in our EHR, is it even necessary to keep these paper sheets? I've started the process of scanning them all into our shared drive, but since the encounters aren't always completely accurate and all of the information is documented in the patient's chart already I feel like these shouldn't need to be retained as well for 7 years? I can't find anything that addresses keeping paper forms along with EHR records and am hoping to save myself the daunting task of scanning in years worth of encounters. Thank you in advance for any advice/guidance/help! I appreciate it!
Jessica
Jessica