Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Do you still keep a backup Paper Chart ?

Some Doctors using a EMR, print out the notes & still keep Paper Charts.
How many of you do that & why ?
Would the Electronic Back Up(Either Tape or Online)not assure the purpose ?
Would keeping a minimal Paper Chart for some patients, still a necessity ?
Any/all feedback would be appreciated, warm regards

1. Yes, some do.
2. Too many, but are scared something would happen to the electronic data is my guess. I can't blame them. Especially, if they don't feel comfortable with their backup system.
3. Yes, again, depending on your backup system. Many are not good enough.
4. No
5. You didn't ask, but I printed out notes for about two months before realizing it was safe not to.

We keep a very thin chart of original paper work signed on first day of visit, my initial evaluation, scan of driver's license and insurance information. About 8 pages total.

We are completely electronic, everything either generated by AC, old charts scanned and archived, insurance cards and other registration stuff signed and scanned. Backups are mirrored on a RAID drive in the office and also to Mozy, and periodically I back up on an external hard drive to take home.

As a result, since 2007, I have never lost a chart. Before that, we would be unable to find charts because misfiled or mistakenly moved to storage. No more.

I have developed an "allergy" to paper and we have converted to completely electronic as fast as we can ( except for the charge slip). I haven't lost any electronic chart but have occasional lost notes or messages in AC. ( This problem is on another thread.) I am not going to back up to paper, I back up as recommended to AC offsite. I am convinced that this EMR has every advantage imaginable over the old paper charts. It blows me away that I can access what used to fill an entire room full of metal file cabinets from my little tablet nearly instantaneously from any place in the world.

Deb,

I am proud of you. I would say Go Girl, but that is out of fashion.

But, Go Girl anyway.

John

You do it exactly the way I do -- well pretty close. Using a Buffalo RAID 5 config. I am going to try one more thing which I forgot at them moment.

The only difference about Bert is that he can probably turn himself back to any day in the last month using his backup -- so if he wanted to go back to 9/3/09 he could....

Hell, I can probably go back to 1984. Wait...was AC around then? Wait, I wasn't even a doctor then. Wasn't I still happy then and had a life?

Actually, at the moment, I can still go back to 8?26/09 with monthlys back to 2004.

I back up to AC nightly, my fash drive to include the imported items file now 1.3gig and I separately save my imported items to a separate external hard drive and flash drive. I did have a data loss under version 3.6 of my imported items so I keep the separate copies now.