AZ Sint-Rembert is a regional hospital with 211 beds, 600 employees and 70 doctors where people from the Houtland region can go for specialist treatment of all kinds. Because hospitals have to keep all patient records for up to 30 years after the death of the patient, all the files were taking up a huge amount of space.

Jurgen Blauwet, head of medical records and archive management: ‘The financial cost of managing our passive archive was going up all the time. Not just because of the increasing number of square metres of floor space, but due to the extra equipment we needed, such as racks.’

Just at the right time

It was at this very point that Merak presented its services to the hospital. ‘They arrived just at the right time,’ says Jurgen Blauwet. ‘Their proposal corresponded perfectly to our needs: we have complete control of the archive and a perfect overview of it, it’s well secured, completely confidential and well protected against fire, theft, humidity and so on. These are important requirements for us, because we absolutely have to be compliant in these respects in order to maintain our accreditations. And that’s absolutely the case with Merak.’

A problem-free move

The passive archive’s relocation to the Merak site in Schelle also went very smoothly. Jurgen Blauwet: ‘The complete integration started in December 2016 and the entire move was completed within three weeks. The hospital used Merak’s assistance service, so we ourselves had nothing at all to do. Merak employees moved everything under my guidance. But other than say where everything was, I had nothing to do. Afterwards I went to Schelle to see exactly where everything had been stored.’