Organize Doctor’s Office – Organizing Files

Yesterday it was time to get to work organizing files in the patient archive and get it into shape.  We had to start by purging all of the older files that no longer needed to be kept – the first step of organizing files in any office.  While there is a retention guideline established, time hadn’t been devoted to purging outdated records at the end of each year.  Fortunately the patient’s files were all clearly labeled with colored stickers denoting the year….this made the purging process go very quickly once we got into the groove!

We then segued to filing the newer patient files into the archive.  This proved to be a good mental exercise as close attention needed to be paid to the patient’s names especially in those cases where the last names were long and contained an unusual combination of letters.  We were very thankful to periodically come across a very common name that we knew how to spell.  Now that we have filed 50% of the files into the archive, we have developed a good rhythm and hope to complete this part of the project this week.