Abstract:
Health and medical records constitute one of the important groups of documents and certificates. One of the reasons for this importance is that these records are directly related to the issue of life and death of individuals. With the development of sciences and the progress of health and treatment methods, the production of such records intensified, and their importance and number increased day by day, although today with the help of computers, the intensity of rapid growth has passed and the accumulation of physical records and archives has decreased; however, sometimes the redundancy of data and even useless information prevents researchers in this field from quickly and accurately obtaining the required information. Although some researchers in the health field, and especially physicians, may wish to keep all records due to their research objectives, this is generally not possible. To achieve the best result, document managers, accompanied by archivists, proceed to the disposition of records. In fact, the result of appraisal by archivists is the transfer of records with temporary value to inactive (national) archives, records with permanent value (documents) to the archive, and the issuance of destruction permits for worthless (surplus) papers. In the present article, the value of health-medical records, the reasons and how to appraise them, and the methods of identifying valuable and worthless records will be investigated.
Machine summary:
In fact, the result of appraisal by archivists is the transfer of records with temporary value to inactive ephemera (national) and records with permanent preservation value (documents) to the archive, and the issuance of destruction permits for worthless papers (surplus).
(Azizi, 1386 SH) The Law on the Establishment of the National Archives Organization of Iran has specified five main functions for this organization: "Collecting and preserving the national documents of Iran in a single organization, providing appropriate conditions and facilities for public access to these documents, and also saving administrative and personnel costs through the concentration of inactive files of ministries, state institutions, and government-affiliated organizations, and the destruction of redundant papers.
" (Deputy of National Archives, 1391 SH) To perform its legally assigned duties, this organization is inevitably required to examine—which in archives is referred to by the terms "determining status" and "appraisal" 4—the inactive files of ministries, state institutions, and government-affiliated organizations, for the purpose of collecting and preserving the national documents of Iran, concentrating inactive files, and destroying redundant papers.
Appraisal can be generally defined as follows: the process of evaluating the value of a group of records to determine which of the records should be kept as archival documents and which should be disposed of.
(Ropper, 1999 AD [A]) Among other important objectives that "appraisal" pursues, the following cases can be briefly mentioned: Legitimizing the destruction of redundant papers; formulating retention schedules and determining the useful life of records; freeing up space in repositories; selecting and transferring valuable documents to the national archive (Management of Coordination and Document Appraisal, 1388 SH.
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