“Their archives are all converted already? Our physicians aren’t. They still have paper files.”
I don’t pretend to know all the details, as I’m only a PhD, not a “real” doc. I think we’re now on perhaps our 3rd try at getting truly universal EHR that replaces all the separate legacy systems we had for OP, labs, pharma, IP etc.
In contrast, however, vital records are much simpler and in Hawaii’s case appear to have been digitized long ago. I’m not an IT person, but I presume that compared to whatever vast expenditures might have been required at our AMC, establishing a front-end system that logs every employee’s access to a particular record would be a piece of cake. My understanding was the HIPAA compliance requires this sort of tracking system, but HIPAA per se I believe only applies to medical records not vital statistics records. I’ll apologize in advance if anyone points out my being in error on this point.
>>>vital records are much simpler and in Hawaii’s case appear to have been digitized long ago.
I think they are still new to the digitalization. Hawaii mistakeningly forwarded a database of marijuana users to the local paper back in June.
Which is why I doubt they have all their archives transferred to digital format. That is usually done last, once the current patient files are up and running.