To Get To Better Records Management, Take The Bridge

By Ned Averill-Snell

Improving records management is a little like losing weight. It’s easiest to lumber along not thinking about it, until a wakeup call comes, like chest pains or the doctor telling you that you are one milkshake away from diabetes.

American companies have been lumbering along in denial about their poor records management for decades, because no matter how much money they waste on inefficient practices and policies, they simply haven’t had the chest pains yet--no aspect of their practices has hurt their bottom line hard enough to provide that wakeup call, to jolt them into the long, expensive travail of cleaning up their records management.

Healthcare companies and some government organizations are the lucky ones, although surely they don’t see it that way, at least not yet. Thanks to the 2011 Presidential Memorandum--Managing Government Records, all executive-branch departments and agencies are required to get their records management in order, and the 2010 Affordable Care Act includes similar provisions demanding the same of healthcare providers and related companies. In both cases, a key provision is moving wherever possible to electronic records--because if companies don’t first do something about getting all the paper online, almost none of the other efficiencies of better records management is achievable.

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