Archive replaces Epic’s Health Information Management module with a platform that treats the medical record as what it is: the legal, clinical, and financial foundation of every patient encounter. Chart completion tracking, physician deficiency management, release of information processing, record amendment workflows, and coding quality assurance are managed through a single system that ensures every record is complete, accurate, and available when needed.
Health information management is the discipline that ensures medical records are complete, accurate, timely, and legally defensible. Yet in most health systems, HIM is an afterthought — underfunded, understaffed, and operating with tools designed for a paper era. Physician deficiency rates routinely exceed 30%. Release of information requests take 7 to 14 days when patients have a legal right to receive their records within 30 days. Chart completion backlogs grow until a regulatory survey forces emergency remediation. The record is simultaneously the most important document in healthcare and the least consistently managed.
Archive scans every discharged patient record for completeness against configurable rules: operative report present within 24 hours, discharge summary within 48 hours, history and physical signed, consents on file, verbal orders authenticated. Deficiencies are assigned to the responsible physician with automated notifications escalating from reminder to department chair alert to medical staff suspension warning on a configurable timeline. Deficiency dashboards show real-time completion rates by department, physician, and deficiency type.
Release of information is a high-volume, high-liability function. Every request must be validated against HIPAA authorization requirements, state-specific regulations, and institutional policies. Archive automates ROI processing: requests are logged, authorization is validated, responsive records are identified, restricted content (psychotherapy notes, substance abuse, HIV) is flagged for special handling, and records are assembled and delivered through the requester’s preferred channel. An audit trail documents every disclosure for regulatory compliance.
Patients have the right to request amendments to their medical records under HIPAA. Archive manages the amendment workflow from patient request through provider review, approval or denial with documented rationale, and permanent attachment of the amendment to the original record. Physician addenda follow a similar workflow with clear audit trails showing what was changed, when, and by whom. Legal hold management prevents record modification or destruction when litigation is pending.
The accuracy of the medical record directly determines the accuracy of coding, which directly determines reimbursement and quality scores. Archive integrates with Clarion Scribe and Arbiter RCM to provide clinical documentation improvement (CDI) workflows: concurrent chart review identifies documentation gaps that would result in under-coding, CDI specialists issue queries to physicians requesting clarification, and query responses are tracked to ensure timely completion. Coding accuracy audits compare assigned codes to documentation and flag discrepancies for review.
Medical records are subject to complex retention requirements that vary by state, record type, patient age, and payer. Archive manages retention schedules across all record types, applies legal holds that prevent destruction of records involved in litigation, and executes compliant destruction with documented certificates of destruction. Retention policies are configurable by state jurisdiction, and the system automatically identifies records eligible for destruction while excluding those under hold.
Archive extends Clarion Axis’s EMPI capabilities with HIM-specific record reconciliation workflows. When duplicate records are identified, HIM analysts review the records for clinical content conflicts, merge non-conflicting records automatically, and flag records with conflicting clinical data for physician review before merging. The merge workflow preserves a complete audit trail showing which source records contributed to the merged record, enabling reversal if errors are discovered.
A 1,200-bed academic medical center deployed Archive to address a physician deficiency rate that had reached 29% and triggered a regulatory warning. The automated escalation workflow — reminder at 48 hours, department chair notification at 72 hours, suspension warning at 7 days — reduced the deficiency rate to 0.6% within 90 days. CDI concurrent review identified an 18% improvement in CC/MCC capture rates, generating $3.8 million in annual revenue from documentation that had been present but not coded. ROI turnaround decreased from 11 days to under 24 hours through automated authorization validation and digital delivery.
We had a 29% physician deficiency rate. Twenty-nine percent of our charts were incomplete beyond the regulatory deadline. Our medical staff leadership talked about it at every meeting and nothing changed. Archive changed it in 90 days. The automated escalation workflow — reminder, chair notification, suspension warning — was not popular. But it was effective. Our deficiency rate is now 0.6%. The records are complete. The coding is accurate. The revenue reflects the care we actually delivered. And when a plaintiff’s attorney requests a chart, there is nothing missing.
See Archive configured for your organization.