Ugh, that's horrible... imaging having to do another entire workup for a chronic condition, just because of something that is out of your control!!!

As others mentioned in this thread, even if you have a bunch of notes sitting inside a dusty old server or file cabinet in a dead hospital, it doesn't necessarily mean that the notes are easily accessed. This once again demonstrates the necessity for a more centralized standard for EMRs... one day I hope we can get something like a "USB standard" for medical record data

I was JUST thinking about this in clinic today, that even though we have all this technology "infrastructure" (if that is what you call it), we end up just scanning PDFs of medical notes and putting them on EPIC. In fact, within the SAME hospital system, in the SAME city, we would be scanning PDFs. It's bizarre!!!

This whole area is ripe for intervention by CMS, because clearly EPIC/Cerner/every other EMR company isn't going to be doing anything...