Medical Record Destruction

One of the main projects I have overseen during my internship is the patient paper record destruction process. This has helped me complete my goal of gaining a better understanding of the Electronic Medical Record filing system and the money that can be saved by storing less physical records. As I began the project, the first step was thoroughly educating myself on Maryland State Law and how our process was structured to ensure the laws were obeyed. Once I understood the details associated with   the destruction of patient records, I put a plan into place to see this project through. Not only did I learn a lot of valuable lessons during this project, my problem-solving skills were utilized as we ran into obstacles we had to overcome.
The most valuable thing I learned from this process, is the money a company can save by cleaning out old records and converting them to an Electronic Medical Record system. It is also very important to have a reliable EMR system. I feel like this project could be easily overlooked because of the amount of time it takes to sort through boxes of medical records and retrieve all of the data. In the long run, it is worth the time invested to avoid reoccurring bills from storage companies storing the boxes of medical records just sitting there collecting dust. As I move forward in my career, I believe I have a better understanding of being meticulous and organized in any large project that I will be leading. There were a lot of details to account for during this project and I had to make sure I was prepared to discuss the progress of the project at any given time. I also spent a lot of time working across different departments and with outside companies to ensure protocol was being followed. When we discovered the records of patients were inconsistently matched to the boxes they were supposedly assigned to at one of our sites, we ran into a huge obstacle. We had to problem-solve and spend more time accounting for the missing records thus...