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The Pros of Decentralizing Storage Areas for Medical Records

Decentralized medical record management may mean that records are stored and maintained by a medical or health care provider, rather than by a central agency or organization, such as a public department of health. Decentralized medical records may also refer to a document management system within a given office, in which medical record cabinets are arranged near a particular employee's desk rather than in a central record room. Although many health care professionals advocate for a centralized system of records, there are advantages to decentralization.

  1. Expediency

    • Decentralized medical records are closer to the offices, units, departments or, in some cases, desks of the persons who most frequently handle, use or reference them. Employees of a medical office can easily access records without having to visit a central storage area or storage department. This saves employees time and energy, allowing them to be more productive on the job.

    Privacy

    • There is much wariness about notions of centralized medical records. Many persons are made uneasy by the thought of all of their medical health information being centrally housed, since there is uncertainty about who is authorized to access such information. However, in decentralized storage models, only the persons who have business with records have access to them.

    Security

    • Decentralized medical records are, for the most part, safer from security breaches, since one security breach of a centralized record storage exposes all records. This is true whether storage is electronic or physical. Although decentralized medical records may also be vulnerable to security breaches, a breach will not expose the same extent of liability, since records are distributed and decentralized.

    Localized Methods of Management

    • Since in a decentralized system medical records are the prerogative of health care providers and the individual employees who manage them, records can be stored and managed as those providers and employees see best. Centralized storage, on the other hand, requires uniform methods of storage that may or may not be suited to all the kinds of records being stored.

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