|
Description:
|
A medical record system within a hospital involves storage , retrieval , thinning and repair of the medical record files of patients . A file is created for a patient the first time he is admitted or visits the out -patient clinic . On his subsequent visits to the hospital , the file is retrieved from the storage area and sent to a doctor . When the patient is discharged from care , his new medical records will be added to the file by the doctor as needed , and it will then be sent back to the storage area . Usually , the storage age of a file is defined as the elapsed time since it was last retrieved ; and hence the storage age of a file will grow if a patient does not revisit the hospital .
In general , a hospital has a disposal policy to save storage space by microfilming or destroying a file if the storage age of a file reaches some specific limit . If a patient revisits the hospital before his medical record is disposed of , then the age of the file is set to zero . Based on the definition of the storage age , the state of a medical record can be defined as its storage age . Hence the study of patients' records leads to a dynamic transition process . A Markov chain model can be employed to analyze the process . |