Mother Nature Causes Flood Damaged X-Rays

When it comes to flooding at a hospital or business, flood damaged documents are a real headache. But even more serious are flood damaged X-rays, which can contain irreplaceable medical information. To be sure, today’s X-rays are usually stored electronically as well as physically. Older X-rays, however – especially in smaller towns and more rural areas with limited health IT budgets – may still be available only as physical copies.

For hospitals and other healthcare-related businesses, X-rays are crucial to doing the job right. From fitting a child with braces to performing a major surgery, access to clear and accurate X-rays is essential in providing quality medical care. Restoring flood damaged X-rays, then, is paramount to the document recovery process after a flood.

Listed below are steps you can take to prevent flood damage to your important X-rays and other medical documents:

• High ground: For starters, if you plan on keeping all of your X-rays and medical documents on site, store them in a room on the second or third floor of your office building. Basement and main-level areas flood first, and then the water rises upward. Use gravity in your favor to avoid flood damaged X-rays and documents.
• Scanning: If you haven’t already, scan all of your documents and X-rays and make digital copies of them. This way, even if you face a plethora of flood damaged documents, you will still have the digital copies to rely on in the interim.
• Remote locations: Another good option to ward off flood damaged documents and X-rays, is to store copies off site. There are, of course, legalities involved with doing so, but your patients will thank you in the long run. Choose a site that is secure from flooding and fire damage.
• Online: Storing everything online is the newest craze. This is also goes for important documents. By storing your scanned document images online, you can ensure that you have multiple backups in case of a flood. With cloud computing services, storing and accessing digital X-rays has never been easier. During the process of restoring any flood damaged X-rays, you will be glad you have the online backups.
• Document restoration: If the worst happens and you end up with flood damaged documents and X-rays to deal with, don’t fret! There are document restoration experts who can restore even the wettest X-rays. These firms can even help you digitally scan your documents now so you have backups in case of any future flooding.

X-rays and medical records are very important to surgery, patient recovery and hospital efficiency, to say the least. This is doubly true for medical facilities during a major flood because of the catastrophic effect on the surrounding community, which will often see an increase in serious injuries and hospital visits during a flood.