I would go w/ James' proposal.
My parents had 2 separate practices but in the same office. When my dad passed, we kept the medical records for 7 years. That part wasn't hard. The hard part was when his patients contacted us to get those records, we had to verify their identity, go look for those (physical) charts and then coordinate how they would get the records. Actually it wasn't bad for me bc the same office was still open with my mom's practice. But if you're going to be fully retired, you probably want to avoid having to do all that.