Not a box of loose images with no filenames. Charts are verified against your list, scanned, indexed, and delivered in an organized digital format, whether they are going into your EMR or into storage.
Anyone can run pages through a feeder. The work that matters is confirming the chart is complete and matches the patient it belongs to before it is scanned, indexing it so a specific record can be found in seconds, and delivering it in a structure your staff understands without training.
That is why the output is still usable a year later. Scanning happens on site at your office or by scheduled pickup, depending on volume and how much space you have, and EMR integration is possible as part of the same project.
Most of this work has nothing to do with closing a practice. It is working offices whose records live in two places at once.
New patients are digital, everyone before the cutover is in the file room. Staff still walks back there during appointments, and a records request means pulling from two systems and hoping nothing was missed. We digitize the back catalog and load it where the rest of your charts already live.
Some charts scanned years ago by whoever had time, some still in boxes, no consistent naming and no index. It technically exists digitally, which is worse than paper, because nobody trusts it. We verify the whole set against your list and rebuild it as one organized record.
Charts sitting in a storage unit or a commercial facility, billed every month, with a fee each time one has to come back out. We digitize the whole set so the account can close and the records come home with you.
The retention clock keeps running after the doors close, and the obligation is the physician's. A one-time project replaces years of storage fees and leaves you holding records you can actually answer a request from.
Medicare scoring assumes a certified EHR: clinicians measured under MIPS are graded on Promoting Interoperability, which is a quarter of the total score, and a failed year can cost up to nine percent of Medicare Part B.1 California prescriptions have had to be transmitted electronically since January 1, 2022.2 Audit vendors, health plans, and law firms all expect records to arrive as files, not photocopies.
Most practices have already made that move. It is the charts from before the cutover that never came along, and they are usually what is still holding the office to the file room.
Digitized charts also change what we can take off you. Once records are in one system, KLM can work your third-party requests remotely instead of sending an agent to your file room. See the no-cost solution.
Since January 1, 2024, the Medical Practice Act makes it unprofessional conduct for a physician to fail to keep adequate and accurate patient records for at least seven years after the last date of service.3 That obligation follows the physician, not the practice.
The minimum runs seven years past the last date of service to each patient, so the clock on your newest charts starts the day you close.3
Licensed providers that cease operation must still preserve records at least seven years after discharge, and for a patient who was a minor, until at least one year past their eighteenth birthday and never less than seven years.4
Medi-Cal, Medicare, and Knox-Keene participation carry their own retention clocks, and where more than one applies the longest governs. Knox-Keene is the California law behind most HMO and managed care coverage, so if you contract with those plans their terms reach your records too.5 Many practices extend pediatric charts further, since the malpractice limitations period for a minor can run past eighteen.
General information on California requirements, not legal advice. Your own obligations depend on your practice, your payers, and any open matters, so confirm the specifics with your counsel.
A retiring physician is usually looking at an ongoing storage bill or an EMR subscription kept alive for a practice that no longer sees patients. Both charge every month, and storage companies charge again each time a record has to come back out.
KLM builds a one-time-fee solution instead. Your records are verified, scanned, and delivered in a format organized well enough that you can keep them yourself, retrieve what you need, and answer a request years from now without paying anyone a monthly fee to hold them.
Commercial records storage bills monthly for as long as the retention clock runs, then bills again for every retrieval, every delivery, and eventually for destruction. Below is a practice with about 300 boxes, priced from published storage schedules.
A pull fee plus a trip charge each time a record leaves the facility, with rush pricing if a subpoena is waiting.8
Refiling, interfiling new documents into an existing chart, and reboxing all carry their own per-item rates.8
Destruction runs a per-box fee plus a retrieval charge, so closing the account costs money too.8
Digitizing a storage room means every chart in it passes through someone's hands. That is a compliance event, not a clerical one, and it is handled that way from pickup through delivery.
Every agent handling your charts is HIPAA certified, works under a signed BAA with your office, and the movement of records is logged so it can be accounted for later.
Scanned records are stored and delivered through HIPAA-compliant, encrypted systems rather than consumer file sharing or an unsecured drive in the mail.
The finished set is yours. No portal subscription, no vendor sitting between you and your own records, and no fee to get them back.
Number of charts, rough condition, and your timeline. We will scope it and quote it as a project.
Scope a project