How long must records be retained for deceased patients?

The Laboratory Information System Manager of a medium-sized medical center on the California coast writes to ask "I may be interpreting incorrectly but it seems like these are retain indefinitely" records* and we have kept a lot of them beyond what is useful. Does indefinitely mean forever? Is there a time specified somewhere for removal of deceased patients' records? If you could provide a reference I would appreciate it."

* e.g. AABB Standards, 24th edition, list the following with a minimum retention time (in years) of "Indefinite":

1. Reference Standard 6.2A, Retention of Donor/Unit Records, Item 9: Donors placed on permanent deferral, indefinite deferral, and on surveillance for protection of the recipient.
2. Reference Standard 6.2B, Retention of Patient Records, Item 8: Difficulty in typing, clinically significant antibodies, significant adverse events to transfusions, and special transfusion requirements.

The following comments have been received.

ADDENDA July 30, 2007

1. According to a colleague in Indiana there is no need for immediate accessibility to historical patient records of blood types and serological problems on deceased patients who will no longer be transfused, although such records are worth keeping in an archive for dealing with recalls and retrospective reviews. The Indiana colleagues suggests rewording the discussion question as follows: "How long should deceased patient records be immediately accessible before archiving to another media for long-term storage?" He comments that since hard drives can hold a huge amount of data and are cheap, storage of this information on a computer should be possible for years!

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