Policy needed to manage electronic, paper documents

Contract Language. By Steven M. Harris, AMNews contributor. Feb. 5, 2007.

CONTRACT LANGUAGE

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Don't delete your e-mails so quickly: New electronic discovery provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure descended on physicians and others who run businesses on Dec. 1, 2006.

These new rules impose a duty on physicians who find themselves as litigants to produce "electronically stored information." That includes everything from e-mail and voice mail to computer networks and databases. Essentially, the new rules -- which technically govern rules in federal cases but are often quickly adopted by state courts -- elevate electronic information to the same status and importance as paper.

However, the rules leave a lot of questions unanswered when it comes to what should be held, for how long, and how accessible old information should be. So in order to avoid sanctions for failure to comply with these discovery requests, physicians have no choice but to develop a document retention policy.

With a document retention policy in place, covering both digital and paper information, physicians can continue to destroy unneeded or certain older information without having to worry about getting in trouble.

A document retention policy requires physicians and their medical practices to systematically review, retain, and destroy records and information received or created in the ordinary course of business.

A document retention policy should identify documents and their sources that need to be maintained and outline guidelines for how long specific categories of those documents should be retained. The policy also should state how documents should be destroyed (the "retention and destruction schedule").