Cloverleaf Data Retention Policy

[Tom Rioux]

I’m reviewing our data retention policy on how long SMAT Files should be kept.   We currently keep 90 days per thread on the server in SmatHistory.     Our facility has been keeping everything since what seems like the beginning of time.

What is your organization doing for archiving old SMAT files?   Is there a particular HIPAA regulation for data retention?

Thanks….

Tom Rioux

Topic

[James Cobane]

We only keep 7 days worth of SMAT DBs available on our Cloverleaf server.  If needed, we can go back 30 days from backup, but we only keep the week’s worth on the server.  This is normally more than sufficient for any trouble-shooting that may need to occur.

Our stance is that Cloverleaf is an interface engine and the data is transient; it is not a database/data repository.

I don’t know if there is a HIPAA regulation for this type of data, but I don’t believe so.

Jim Cobane – Henry Ford Health

[Peter Heggie]

We keep the current week plus the previous week (in SmatHistory). We keep another four weeks on a separate file system on the same server. We keep the older SMAT DB files, up to a year back, on AWS. Last week an external system asked what happened to a visit that happened back in February. We figured out that the patient class had been changed after discharge, for billing purposes, and that is why certain processes that happen at discharge did not happen for this account. We could have said no, you are SOL for anything older than a month, but often it is worth finding out what happened some time ago. But that is a line you draw.

There is no retention regulation on this data. It is transient data and not part of any patient permanent record.

Peter Heggie

[Robert Kersemakers]

Back on CL6.2 we had a 120GB disk where we kept all SMAT (file based) for the last 6 weeks. DFT messages were saved 2 years as billing can take quite a while and we would have questions about transactions from a year ago.
Because of the file based SMAT files, we were able to zip them (daily/weekly, according to the cycle save period) to a much smaller size and keep them for a few months on another disk. So if need be we could always go back a few extra months.

We migrated to CL19.1 last year with a 500GB data disk. We now keep all SMAT for 3 months and again the DFT are kept for 2 years. We use about 65% of the data disk.
As we have switched to encrypted SMAT database, these SMATs can’t be zipped anymore. The amount of data is too large to copy to another disk, so 3 months is all we have.

Zuyderland Medisch Centrum; Heerlen/Sittard; The Netherlands

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