Moving your old clinic files as they are: an archiving guide
Your old files are your whole clinic, and you don't need to retype a single line of them. This guide covers what gets moved, how each page goes into its patient's file with its date, what stays your call, and how you get the clinic ready for moving day.
What gets moved?
Everything written for a patient, in whatever form:
- Paper. Cardboard files, follow-up sheets, and the lab and imaging results attached to them. They're photographed page by page, with a phone or a scanner.
- Photos on your phone. The pictures of files that you or your assistant took over the years.
- Tablet notes. Samsung Notes files or any other notes app, exported as images or PDF.
- PDFs and what's on Drive. Ultrasound reports, lab results, and whatever patients sent you on WhatsApp that you kept.
What doesn't move: the old booking book. Upcoming appointments go into the new calendar, and nobody needs the past ones.
Rule one: the original page is the record
We don't retype pages. The photographed page goes into the file as it is, in your handwriting and with its date, and shows in the patient's file above today's pages. If the software reads something from it (last period date, blood group, a blood pressure or a weight), that's a suggestion shown next to the page. You confirm it or correct it, and it doesn't enter the file until you confirm it. What your own eye reads on the original page is always the reference.
So it doesn't matter how rushed your handwriting was, or that half the page is in English and half in Arabic. The page is kept as it is, and you find it by patient and date, not by reading the handwriting.
How does the move go, step by step?
- Collecting. All the files go into one shared folder, in any order. Don't name the files or sort them; that's our job.
- Splitting. Each file is split into pages, any upside-down or skewed page is straightened, and each one is saved at a quality you can read.
- Matching. Each page is matched to its patient. The clue is the file number if it's written on the page, or else the name and phone number. When the software isn't sure about a page, it shows it to the secretary to pick the patient, and the rest of the pages from that same file go in with it.
- Dating. Each page takes the visit date if it's on the page, or else the file's date, marked "approximate" until you confirm it.
- Checking. You open a few patients' files and see their old pages in place. Anything that wasn't matched, or whose patient isn't known, waits in a queue. It isn't lost, and it isn't deleted.
For the first clinics, we do the move ourselves from the shared folder. What's left for the clinic is taking the photos, and answering "whose page is this?" when there's no name on it.
How long does the move take?
It depends on the number of pages, not the number of patients, and we won't give you a number before we've seen a sample. What we always do: we start with the patients who have an appointment in the coming weeks, so their files are ready before they come in, and the rest follows while you work. The clinic doesn't close for a single day for the move.
What about privacy during the move?
- Files aren't sent in a chat or by email. They're collected in a shared folder, with set permissions for who uploads and who reads.
- The top of the page, which carries the patient's name and phone, is cropped off before any software reads anything from the page.
- Where the files are stored, and whether anything leaves the country, is something we agree on with you and write into the contract before the first real file.
- Everyone who opens a page during the move is logged, just as in everyday work.
Getting ready: a checklist
- One shared folder in the clinic's name, and access for whoever uploads the files.
- A sample of ten varied pages for us to try before the full move.
- The list of patients booked in the next three weeks, so we start with them.
- Someone to answer "whose page is this?": usually the secretary.
- An hour of your time to check the first twenty files once they've moved.
Questions
Do I retype anything?
No. The pages go in as they are. The only thing anyone writes is the patient's basic details (name, phone and file number) when they don't already exist, and the secretary writes those.
What if my handwriting can't be read?
It doesn't matter. The page is kept as an image in your handwriting, and it opens by patient and date. The automatic reading is only a suggestion you can ignore.
Do my original files stay with me?
Yes. The paper stays where it is, and the notes and photos stay on your devices. What moves is a copy.
I have two branches, and a patient's files are split between them.
The pages from both branches go into one file for her, by date, and the same file opens in either branch.
Send us ten pages.
We'll try the move on them and show you how they look in the patient's file, before you commit to anything.